{"id":35433,"date":"2016-08-02T02:00:08","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T06:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35433"},"modified":"2016-07-31T09:19:37","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T13:19:37","slug":"the-old-third-vineyards-wins-their-appeal-against-the-vqa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/08\/02\/the-old-third-vineyards-wins-their-appeal-against-the-vqa\/","title":{"rendered":"The Old Third Vineyards wins their appeal against the VQA"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ontario government granted the Vintner’s Quality Alliance (VQA) some regulatory power to police the marketing and labelling of wines made in Ontario, including (the VQA thought) the rights to restrict the use of certain geographical designators like “Ontario” and “Prince Edward County” to VQA-compliant wineries. In a recent decision, a non-VQA winery located in Prince Edward County won an appeal against the VQA’s over-restrictive order<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Yesterday (July 28, 2016) was a big day for The Old Third Vineyards, a small, boutique winery located in Prince Edward County. The Licence Appeal Tribunal ruled in their favour against the Vintner\u2019s Quality Alliance Ontario (VQAO) compliance order that they remove \u201cPrince Edward County\u201d from The Old Third website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Old Third Vineyard is located in Prince Edward County. It is owned and operated by winemaker Bruno Fran\u00e7ois and Jens Korberg. They make Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc wines, sold from their estates. Their wines have received ratings of 90 points or higher by esteemed wine experts Jamie Goode, John Szabo and Quench<\/em>\u2019s own Rick VanSickle. Each vintage \u2013 only one per year per variety \u2013 is bottled with a wine label that reads \u201cProduct of Canada\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, their website has a heading tagline that reads \u201cProducers of fine wine and cider in Prince Edward County.\u201d This is an issue for the VQA.<\/p>\n

On February 3, 2016, VQA compliance officer Susan Piovesan emailed The Old Third with regards to the use of the geographic designation \u201cPrince Edward County\u201d on their website.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the VQA wanted to prevent the Old Third Vineyards from even revealing where in the country they were located because the legal designator for that area is also<\/em> a restricted term for use by the VQA’s own wineries on wine bottle labels. Old Third wasn’t using it on a label, but as any common sense interpretation would agree, they have to indicate where customers can find them if they want to sell much of their wine … and they’re physically located in Prince Edward County, and said that on their website.<\/p>\n

The VQA argued that The Old Third are trying to monopolize on the value the VQA has added to the term \u201cPrince Edward County\u201d by making it an official wine designation. The Tribunal disagreed: \u201cThe information conveyed in the banner \u2026 locates it geographically. Giving the words, in context, their ordinary meaning, they do not convey that the Appellant produces a Prince Edward County wine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tribunal\u2019s ruling in favour of The Old Third shows that, even if an organization that regulates wine believes they own a term or regional name, it doesn\u2019t mean they have the right to enforce their designations on those wineries that don\u2019t wish to buy into the designation. The Old Third is a small vineyard in Prince Edward County and it will most likely remain that way.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s these small wineries that first put Prince Edward County on the wine scene \u2013 there wouldn\u2019t be a VQA designation for Prince Edward County if it weren\u2019t for the wineries and estates that were producing quality wines long before the VQA came around in 2007: Waupoos Winery, The Grange of Prince Edward Vineyards and Winery, Casa-Dea Estates Winery, By Chadsey\u2019s Cairns Winery, Sandbanks Estates Winery\u2026 the list goes on (and on).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ontario government granted the Vintner’s Quality Alliance (VQA) some regulatory power to police the marketing and labelling of wines made in Ontario, including (the VQA thought) the rights to restrict the use of certain geographical designators like “Ontario” and “Prince Edward County” to VQA-compliant wineries. In a recent decision, a non-VQA winery located in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"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":[8,6,131],"tags":[87,790,661,142],"class_list":["post-35433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-cancon","category-wine","tag-ontario","tag-princeedwardcounty","tag-regulation","tag-vqa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9dv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35433","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=35433"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35436,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35433\/revisions\/35436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}