{"id":15001,"date":"2012-05-10T10:15:20","date_gmt":"2012-05-10T15:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=15001"},"modified":"2012-05-10T10:15:20","modified_gmt":"2012-05-10T15:15:20","slug":"the-vintners-kwality-approximation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/05\/10\/the-vintners-kwality-approximation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vintner’s Kwality Approximation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Pinkus<\/a> expresses the feelings of a lot of Ontario wine drinkers:<\/p>\n

There has been a lot of talk by media-types lately about VQA … about how the VQA symbol is finding its way onto inferior wines; inferior, bland, uneventful, non-descript wine blends — the latest culprit in this category are whites … a growing segment of the LCBO market. These white blends seem to encompass the kitchen and the sink … everything is fair game in them, from Chardonnay Musque to Viognier to Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc (just name a white grape and it’s in there) and of course there’s always some Gewurztraminer thrown into the mix. I find myself on this topic after reading Rod Phillips’ musings, [who] went so far as to accuse the Ontario wine industry and the VQA of dumbing down wine — actually regressing us back to a time when Ontario wine was the laughing stock of the wine world.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

Let’s get back to VQA … I’m gonna let you in on another highly guarded secret: VQA is NOT, repeat NOT a sign of quality … it’s a symbol of origin. That’s’ right, according to executive director, Laurie MacDonald, whom the Wine Writers’ Circle of Canada members had a meeting with back in 2011. She was adamant the VQA was all about origin — not quality … so why is the word “Quality” in the acronym? Good question … to which I would hazard a guess there is no really good answer besides it sounded good at the time; but I also offer you this: it sure sounds better than Questionable?<\/p>\n

I’m sure, in the past, that you have tasted a wine with a big VQA symbol on it and thought “this is some nasty-ass sh*t … how did that pass VQA?” Yes there’s a tasting component to the process, but I have been assured by many a winery that they just think it’s cash grab by the VQA. It costs a winery $265.50 a shot to run tests through the VQA lab and get authorization to use the symbol on their bottles and a wine can be submitted up to 3 times.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I usually check any Ontario wine for the VQA symbol, and almost always put back any that don’t carry the “stamp of approval”, but I’ve certainly bought more than a few wines carrying the VQA symbol that were unpleasant drinking experiences.<\/p>\n

In fairness, I’ve also bought more than a few French wines with AOC designations that failed to live up to expectations, and even more Italian DOC wines that were a waste of money. Wine, by its very nature, can’t be as consistent as other products, so things like the VQA\/AOC\/DOC are only guideposts, not destination markers. You still have to exercise judgement and roll the dice now and again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Pinkus expresses the feelings of a lot of Ontario wine drinkers: There has been a lot of talk by media-types lately about VQA … about how the VQA symbol is finding its way onto inferior wines; inferior, bland, uneventful, non-descript wine blends — the latest culprit in this category are whites … a growing […]<\/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":[8,6,9,131],"tags":[167,87,142],"class_list":["post-15001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-cancon","category-law","category-wine","tag-baitandswitch","tag-ontario","tag-vqa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3TX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15001","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=15001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15002,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15001\/revisions\/15002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}