Thursday, August 21, 2008

I AM (30%) CANADIAN

In my last post I recalled my first experience with a product that blended Ontario wine with foreign content, L'Escapade from Chateau Gai, circa 1987, containing 30% French wine. Now, some twenty years later, the current version of that same wine company has the right to put up to 70% foreign wine into its blends. When that struck me recently I was a bit shocked by it. Taxpayers spent millions of dollars supporting grape growers in tearing up vines, 8,200 acres of them, to replace them with viniferas, so that the quality of our wines could be dramatically improved. Despite that investment in the early '90s and much more planting since, the pre-'93 wineries can use more offshore wine today than they could before we had all of this new tonnage of quality fruit. In every industry there are stars and crew and the grape growers don't get the shiny white trailers on this film lot. Here's some "sour grapes" from their web site:
Today there is no crop shortage to justify allowing so much foreign content in our wine. In fact, grape growers are facing potential crop surpluses and depressed prices because the current wine content act is hurting our industry. We want consumers to understand what they are buying, and support wineries that produce 100% Ontario wines.
One can sympathize with their position. The wines they're talking about currently outsell VQA (100% Ontario grapes) by a factor of 3 to 1. Isn't it a bit strange to contemplate the possibility that our wine industry is supporting other country's wine industries, buying what might be surplus some years to supply demand for a "made in Canada" product that only has to be 30% Canadian? Maybe it's just me.

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