{"id":1435,"date":"2009-10-15T12:02:20","date_gmt":"2009-10-15T16:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=1435"},"modified":"2009-10-15T10:05:19","modified_gmt":"2009-10-15T14:05:19","slug":"remember-cellared-in-canada-means-its-not-canadian-wine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/10\/15\/remember-cellared-in-canada-means-its-not-canadian-wine\/","title":{"rendered":"Remember: “Cellared in Canada” means it’s not Canadian<\/em> wine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Pinkus<\/a> has a couple of anecdotes about the marketing sleight-of-hand that allows certain Canadian wineries to sell foreign-sourced wines as if they were Canadian:<\/p>\n

\n

Picture, if you will, a classroom of about 30 adult students. Teacher stands up at the front and writes the words \u201cCellared in Canada\u201d on the blackboard, he then asks, \u201cWho has heard this term?\u201d Head nods of agreement, they have heard of this. The teacher then writes these three letters \u201cV-Q-A\u201d on the board, \u201cWho\u2019s heard this term?\u201d he asks. Everyone again nods accession. \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference?\u201d Silence ensues. There are then some attempts to explain the difference, but there always seems to be a little confusion in the definition. The words, \u201cno, but thanks for playing,\u201d escaped my lips on more than one occasion. Yes I was that teacher and this happened less than 2 weeks ago. With all the media hype surrounding Cellared in Canada the only thing anyone knows for sure is that somehow cellared wines are bad; but VQA, has somehow been lumped in there too, the term has gotten lost in all the hype. Truth is, these two terms should be as clear as night and day to Ontario wine drinkers.<\/p>\n

Now picture this. A man driving down the road, his cell phone rings, he answers, pleasantries are exchanged, then the question is posed, \u201cWhat\u2019s up?\u201d The person on the other end of the phone is a winery owner with a very real concern, \u201cWe\u2019re getting hammered here by irate customers telling us that they are disappointed with us and angry about being duped over our use of foreign grapes and off shore wines.\u201d He pauses for dramatic effect, \u201cWe don\u2019t make cellared wines, we\u2019re strictly VQA, always have been always will be. Mike is there anything you can do?\u201d Oh how I wish I could. My worst fears are now being realized; all Ontario wine is being painted with the sloppy broad-brush strokes of Cellared in Canada.<\/p>\n

The two stories above are true and have come about due to the continuing controversy surrounding Cellared in Canada wine. Let\u2019s be crystal clear about these two products: Cellared in Canada and VQA. Cellared in Canada is the foreign blend with 30% Ontario content (0% in B.C.); it is a bastard child with no home, an orphan with no earthly parentage. VQA, on the other hand is a purebred, it is 100% from the province it states, Ontario or B.C., currently the only 2 provinces with VQA regulations in place. A VQA wine has the flavour of its origin, it has a home, it has that aspect of \u201cTerroir\u201d the French so rightly hype. Terroir means soil, but it means more than that when talking about wine, it\u2019s a combination, a culmination if you will, of everything mother nature brings to the table in any given year that goes into making that wine — the soil, the climate, the environment. VQA is Ontario wine — 100% — always has been, always will be — if it says VQA, it\u2019s A-OK. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Pinkus has a couple of anecdotes about the marketing sleight-of-hand that allows certain Canadian wineries to sell foreign-sourced wines as if they were Canadian: Picture, if you will, a classroom of about 30 adult students. Teacher stands up at the front and writes the words \u201cCellared in Canada\u201d on the blackboard, he then asks, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,131],"tags":[167,344,142],"class_list":["post-1435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-law","category-wine","tag-baitandswitch","tag-cellaredincanada","tag-vqa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-n9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1436,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions\/1436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}