If Anyone Cared About Canadian Wine, This Would Be a Problem
The Vintners Quality Alliance of British Columbia has decided that it will only give its seal of quality approval to wines packaged in glass bottles.
The decree created something of a glass ceiling for wineries that want to market wines that meet VQA standards in alternative formats, such as PET, Tetra Pak formats and, in the case of 30,000-case Summerhill Pyramid Organic Winery in Kelowna, the venerable bag-in-box.
Responding to a sommelier’s suggestion, Summerhill is preparing to launch two wines in a 3L bag-in-box format later this month. The two wines in question, an Ehrenfelser and a Merlot, will primarily be available in traditional bottles bearing the VQA designation. But casks of the same wines won’t bear the designation because it’s against the law.
The dawning understanding that packaging doesn’t effect the quality of a wine has led to enormous innovation. The trend in the last few years has been for better and better wines to end up in alternative packaging — which is cheaper, leaves less of a carbon footprint and, in many cases, is more consumer friendly than bottles. It is particularly popular with younger consumers prized by marketers.
A big setback for alternative packaging? Not exactly. According to figures provided by Wines of Canada and The World Wine Market Survey, BC produces roughly 0.05% of the world’s wines. That’s roughly one-third of the amount of wine produced by Gallo.
So if BC wants to shut itself off from one of the dominant trends in wine marketing, they can do it without it affecting the rest of us even a little.
h/t Dr. Vino
May 27th, 2011 at 6:31 PM
Have you ever tried Canadian wine? The Okanagan Valley in BC has brought home traphies from the IWSC in England for the world’s best Sparkling Wine, Merlot, Chardonnay, and Icewine, as well as gold medals from France and around the world.
Good article about packaging, but ignorant title!
These Okanagan wines are available in the US by direct delivery: http://www.summerhill.bc.ca/Wines/Bateman–GTK–Series
May 27th, 2011 at 6:54 PM
The title was not so much ignorant as it was sarcastic. I, personally, am a big fan of Canadian icewine and of Canadians in general, given their politeness and willingness to refer to their own currency as a “loony.” Also, I like BC because it’s where Doug and the Slugs came from, and they’re, like, my favorite band, like, ever.
As to winning gold medals in wine competitions: with thousands of wine competitions around the world, who hasn’t?
May 27th, 2011 at 7:08 PM
Not gold medals – trophies (as in only one given out per year in each category from among hundreds of entries at the largest international wine competition in the world). Glad to hear you’ve tried Canadian wines… maybe not so ignorant after all!
May 27th, 2011 at 7:17 PM
Let’s not go overboard. I’m still pretty ignorant.
May 27th, 2011 at 10:10 PM
True! I have a cellar stocked with box upon box of wine. I have my eye on a box of 1986 Almaden Chardonnay for the Palin 2013 inauguration.
May 30th, 2011 at 1:26 PM
Whenever I have Cognac and Bologna I enjoy wines from Canadia. D&tS. Best band evah, eh.