We saw big changes to how the LCBO does business with the introduction of online sales. We also saw beer and wine beginning to make their way on to grocery store shelves in Ontario and B.C.

One of the biggest changes, though, for now anyway, comes in the way of labelling rules and requirements.

You might think that Canadian wine is just that, Canadian, but, you’d be wrong — kind of. You see, a long time ago in a winery far, far away, somebody much smarter than me figured out a way to bring bulk, inexpensive Canadian wine to market, in order to compete with inexpensive wines from California, Australia, Italy, etc. A new wine designation was thus created. ‘Cellared in Canada’ (CiC) was born in the late 1980s and gave producers a way to make wine on the cheap. The idea was to import cheap, pre-fermented bulk juice from other countries and mix it with a tiny bit of Canadian juice and still call it Canadian wine.

Let’s get one thing out of the way here, Cellared in Canada (now known as ICB – International Canadian Blends) wines are not Canadian wines.

I’m not saying these wines shouldn’t exist, countries all over the world make these kinds of wines. This category of wine adds billions to the economy and directly and indirectly accounts for over 10,000 jobs in this country. These wines are fine, but they’re not a representation of Canadian wine and the category gives Canadian wine a bad name.

It seems that the industry, after decades of denial, have more or less agreed. These wines are not Canadian.  In the fall, the top players in the Canadian wine world got together to discuss the future of the category.

During this series of meetings in Toronto and Penticton, the Canadian Vintners Association, Vintners Quality Alliance, the LCBO and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (they look after labelling laws) specifically discussed the use of the words Canadian and Canada on labels for wines that contain juice from outside of the country.

After what I’m sure was riveting discussion, the group decided that “VQA and ICB categories don’t compete against each other, and that negative publicity on ICB wines creates confusion and distrust which hurts the entire industry.” — Nothing critics and producers haven’t been saying for years. No matter, THIS is huge for Canadian producers. Dropping any reference to Canada from the name means that these wines won’t be people’s first impression of Canadian wine.

These wines will no longer contribute to the overall image, both domestically and internationally, of what Canadian wine is all about.

Read more at source: The Weekly News