{"id":409,"date":"2009-08-06T09:35:01","date_gmt":"2009-08-06T13:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=409"},"modified":"2009-10-15T10:08:15","modified_gmt":"2009-10-15T14:08:15","slug":"stepping-into-a-minefield-in-buckhorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/08\/06\/stepping-into-a-minefield-in-buckhorn\/","title":{"rendered":"Stepping into a minefield in Buckhorn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Pinkus<\/a> found some unexpectedly vocal critics after he criticized the organizers of Fiesta Buckhorn over their wine and beer selections:<\/p>\n

\n

For once I wasn\u2019t trying to stir up controversy, honest . . . but somehow it found me. A little over two weeks ago I wrote about Fiesta Buckhorn in my On the Road with the Grape Guy<\/em> blog<\/a>; amongst the wine picks and new winery news was a paragraph entitled, \u201cShame on Buckhorn\u201d where I chastised them for, once again, allowing Cellared in Canada wines to be poured at an \u201cAll Ontario\u201d wine event. There was also an aside, 2-lines within that heading, about a Mexican beer being there amongst all the Ontario craft breweries — but my main focus was the wine, the beer issue had just been pointed out to me in passing during a discussion with another attendee; I hate to say it but I hadn\u2019t noticed them. Well, let me tell you, the mess really hit the fan, so to speak; I received letters from past organizers, current organizers, wine writers and others, weighing in on the controversy. <\/p>\n

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

Two comments made to me (one by past the other by present organizers) concerned me, and encapsulated what is truly wrong with the Ontario wine market and consumer: \u201c. . . quite frankly, there isn\u2019t anyone on the committee knowledgeable enough who can identify non-Ontario wine to us.\u201d In my opinion, this should be rectified immediately and should have been identified as a problem years ago. But it is the next comment that shows a total lack of understanding with regards to the sensitivity of this issue these days when there are websites and petitions against Cellared wines: \u201cHow were we to know that this was the case with [the wine in question]? How are we to know what any content of any wine is? Are we to conduct a privately funded research program to do so? We are a NOT FOR PROFIT ORGANIZATION raising funds for a community center.\u201d My comment to that was quite simply: \u201cLEARN\u201d (capitalization begets capitalization), after all, there are plenty of sources out there, use the resources available to you. Crying ignorance is no defense.<\/p>\n

The problem stems from the belief that I was accusing Fiesta organizers of willfully deceiving the public, which I am not. Let me state again: I am not accusing Fiesta Buckhorn organizers of deception; I have and will continue to accuse the winemakers of \u201ccellared\u201d wine (who shall go un-named here because this article is not about their product — this time) of deceiving the public, until such time as labeling practices change. What I am saying is that Buckhorn was merely an accomplice or, more to the point, the facilitator. \u201cWe intend to offer wine lovers a chance to taste wines from Ontario Vintors [sic]. We do not intend to deceive anyone. We also don\u2019t hire the RCMP to forensically verify every wine served.\u201d I was angrily informed. \u201cAnd yet,\u201d I retorted, \u201cyou offend the Vintners who pour 100% Ontario product by allowing one company to bring in the fake stuff.\u201d And saying nothing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s absolutely inexcusable for the organizers of a Canadian wine event to be unaware of the differences between VQA and “Cellared in Canada” wines . . . in simple terms, VQA is guaranteed to be Canadian wine, CiC is guaranteed to be up to 70% foreign<\/strong>. The wineries that do their level best to disguise foreign wine as domestic deserve to have their deceitful practices exposed and shamed. One particular no-longer-Canadian-owned wine conglomerate is quite noteworthy for this kind of deceptive marketing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Pinkus found some unexpectedly vocal critics after he criticized the organizers of Fiesta Buckhorn over their wine and beer selections: For once I wasn\u2019t trying to stir up controversy, honest . . . but somehow it found me. A little over two weeks ago I wrote about Fiesta Buckhorn in my On the Road […]<\/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":[6,131],"tags":[167,344,142],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-wine","tag-baitandswitch","tag-cellaredincanada","tag-vqa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","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=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1439,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/1439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}