When is an Ontario wine not an Ontario wine?

The answer may well be "all the time" if a proposed temporary change to the Ontario government's labelling requirements for the 2005 vintage, according to a Toronto Star report (reg. req'd.):

The goal is to prop up the VQA-approved, 100-per-cent-made-in-Ontario brands. To do that, wineries propose that they should be allowed to devote more of their scarce grapes to those higher-profile, pricier brands and less to their blended varieties.

The plan is to lower the amount of Ontariograpes required for blended brands from 30 per cent to zero. That means that a bottle of wine from an Ontario vintner could be made entirely of foreign grapes.

"We want to try and keep as much high-quality VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance) wines on the shelf as possible. It's certainly going to help us in terms of brand perception," said Norm Beal, chair of the Wine Council of Ontario, which represents dozens of wineries.

But the vintners and growers only want the change to last one year, to apply to the 2005 vintage bottles that will hit shelves early in 2006. After that, the minimum blend requirements would return to 30 per cent Ontario grapes.

As you probably know from reading the blog, I'm generally a fan of the VQA system, in so far as it promotes higher quality Canadian wines. This is less a quality issue than a regulatory one: the Ontario wineries want to retain more of the locally grown crop — which will be down significantly from previous years — for their premium VQA wines, but that means that the Ministry of Government Services must allow them to sell wines from totally foreign grapes to be sold as "Ontario" wines.

I rarely buy non-VQA wines, so it's not going to directly effect me . . . but if they don't allow the change, it will probably drive up the price of VQA wines. Colour me prejudiced in favour of the change!

A related move by the Wine Council is to ask the LCBO to make the distinction between VQA and non-VQA wines more obvious to consumers:

Currently, both VQA and blended wines sit in the "Ontario" aisle, though in separate sections.Though Beal noted that blended wines say "Cellared in Canada" on the label so as not to completely hide foreign content, he said, "It sometimes can be a little bit confusing. A lot of people don't look at the label until they get their wine home."

And the addition of local-made but entirely foreign-content wines could increase the confusion.

So the groups want a distinct "Cellared in Canada" area — which would be home to the zero-per-cent local content wines next year and the 30-per-cent wines once the proposed stopgap blend change returns to normal.

This is a good move regardless of whether the other proposal is allowed. I hope the LCBO follows through on it.

Hat tip to Jon for the link to the Toronto Star article.