Year one of the Wine Access Canadian Wine Awards was a stress-filled three days. David Lawrason and I, plus 10 judges, were crammed in what we could afford: a tiny, attic-like space at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto.
The Fairmont Royal York is a beautiful hotel, but the space we had was a far cry from the spacious ballrooms of the Delta Hotel high above Halifax Harbour where, for five days this year, 15 gifted Canadian judges assessed a record 1,117 wines, all tasted blind. In the back room, an equally talented staff and volunteers unpacked, poured, served and repacked every bottle without a hitch.
Yes, the national circle has finally closed, 11 years after the start of the Wine Access Canadian Wine Awards. Throughout the years, we have stopped across the country in Victoria, Penticton, Toronto and Niagara-on-the-Lake, but the journey was incomplete until the 2011 edition took us to Nova Scotia and the magical Annapolis Valley.
The reception given to the judges and the back-room team was genuine and disarming and for the first time ever, it felt as if we were finally accomplishing our goal of raising the wine bar across Canada — of encouraging winemakers to do their very best, always, and then recognizing that excellence.
Take Nova Scotia, for instance. The province’s producers have learned a great deal from some of the original industry visionaries in Niagara, the Okanagan and the world, and have quickly improved their wines. I will never forget standing inside the industrialchic, highly efficient Benjamin Bridge winery this summer, while sipping mind-blowing sparkling wines that would challenge any highly rated French Champagne.
Then again, almost all Canadian-made wines are better than ever — perhaps the most exciting discovery of the 2011 CWA.
The repeat win by Tawse Winery as the Winery of the Year suggests winemaker Paul Pender has his house in order. The six gold medals that have been awarded to Tawse, both this year and as last year’s Winery of the Year, put an exclamation mark on the competition’s ability to reward excellence from year to year.
The judges displayed a deft ability to not only find the best wines, but to find them many times throughout the week-long tastings. It has turned into more than just a competition; it is a Polaroid photo, an annual snapshot of the state of Canadian wine.
Almost all the wine this year is better than previous years, making it tougher than ever for winemakers to capture a gold or silver medal. Big, fat, ripe oaky wines, brimming with coffee and chocolate notes, are less likely to make it to the finals than a decade ago. Ditto for high-alcohol wines. Finesse, balance, acidity, flavour and the taste of some sort of elusive terroir are the new standards by which all wines are judged. And they still performed brilliantly.
Speaking of standards, we may raise ours next year. With so many wineries in sight of the bar, we think it would be prudent to raise it another notch.
Photo: Sean Ganann
Slightly muddled apple fruits, paraffin and apple peel, with a mild, leafy, herbal aroma. Clean and consistent on the palate, with a slightly oily texture, lifted floral and fruit characters. No development on the palate, but a pleasing wine, overall. This wine won a silver medal at the Wine Access 2011 Canadian Wine Awards.
(37 entries, 24 medals)
Slightly darker in colour than its contemporaries at the 2011 Canadian Wine Awards, the nose is toasty and autolytic, with lemon, apple, slightly smoky, honey and mineral notes. Fairly spicy on the palate, with near perfect balance. A pleasure to drink. This wine won a gold medal at the Wine Access 2011 Canadian Wine Awards.
The British Columbia government has amended its rules governing the use of vintages on wine labels for BC VQA wines and Wines of Distinction.
As of July 21, in order to publish a vintage year on a label, the required percentage of grapes from that year in the wine has been lowered to 85%.
All wines sold after July 21 may therefore use up to 15% grapes from a vintage other than that marked on the label.
Claire Biddiscombe is the Editorial Assistant with Wine Access magazine and Managing Editor on the Canadian Wine Annual. Her work has appeared in print and on community radio stations across the country. She is the magazine’s resident science nut.
The Western Oasis Wine Garden is an island of calm in the bustle and energy of the Calgary Stampede.
“It gets busy in here, but it’s nowhere close to out there,” says Sean Doherty, one of the servers at the Wine Garden.
Claire Biddiscombe is the Editorial Assistant with Wine Access magazine and Managing Editor on the Canadian Wine Annual. Her work has appeared in print and on community radio stations across the country. She is the magazine’s resident science nut.
The Carone 2008 Cabernet Severnyi was the official red wine served at the Montreal reception for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge during their tour of Canada.
Allison McNeely is the web editor of Wine Access. Her work has appeared on websites, blogs and in print. She loves running and is the magazine's resident web nerd.
Red meat and red wine are a natural pairing.
And, if you live in the Okanagan, you have a house full of wine and your brother raises cattle — well, why not combine the two in a novel way?
Janice Ravndahl and her brother, Darrel Timm, did. The result is Sezmu Meats, a line of wine-fed beef that has been picked up by chefs in top restaurants throughout Vancouver and the Okanagan.
Claire Biddiscombe is the Editorial Assistant with Wine Access magazine and Managing Editor on the Canadian Wine Annual. Her work has appeared in print and on community radio stations across the country. She is the magazine’s resident science nut.
Today's wine picks. Click on the wine name to view the full tasting note. Subscribe to Buyer's Guide+ to receive 15 free tasting notes to your inbox every Thursday.
Allison McNeely is the web editor of Wine Access. Her work has appeared on websites, blogs and in print. She loves running and is the magazine's resident web nerd.
Today, Terry David Mulligan and his golden retriever, Josie, will leave Penticton to drive to Banff for the Banff Rocky Mountain Wine and Food Festival.
In his car, Mulligan, a former MuchMusic VJ and British Columbia-based broadcaster who hosts the program Tasting Room Radio, will carry wine from several Canadian and international wineries. At “high noon,” on the Trans-Canada highway at the British Columbia-Alberta border, he will stop the car and film himself carrying the case over the provincial boundary.
In doing so, he will break a federal law that dates back to the 1920s.
And if no one is there to stop him, Mulligan will walk back to his car, get in and continue to Banff. He plans to arrive in time for a late lunch.
The law Mulligan will defy is the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act (IILA). Introduced in 1928, it prohibits anyone other than government-owned liquor boards from importing alcohol into a province.
“Every day, by the hundreds and by the thousands — and eventually by the millions — Canadians come into Ontario from other parts of the country and they buy their wine, or they go into Nova Scotia or they go into British Columbia and they buy their wine and they go back to their home province, with their wine in their motorhome or in the trunk of their car — they have broken this law. We are forced to break this law each and every day. The law has to change,” Mulligan says.
To understand this law, it’s necessary to go back to when it was created, as Prohibition was coming to an end in Canada, says Mark Hicken, a Vancouver-based lawyer who provides services to the wine industry
“British Columbia ended Prohibition in 1921 and was the first province to switch to a system of government control. And then the other provinces all ended Prohibition within a few years after that,” Hicken explains.
“At that point there was a huge problem with bootlegging. The provinces had difficulties because one province might have ended Prohibition and the neighbouring province still had it, and even though the province had decided to carry on with Prohibition, people within the province could just order liquor from a different province, or they could buy it from bootleggers. … And so [the provinces] lobbied the federal government to act and to introduce this 1928 law, which would make it illegal to transport liquor across provincial lines, unless it was going to a government-controlled system.”
Eighty-three years later, the act is still on the books, although Hicken says that, to his knowledge, no one has been charged under the federal law since at least the 1960s. It’s outdated and no longer serves the purpose for which it was intended, he says.
“For the life of me, I can’t think of any reason you would want to keep this law, aside from revenue reasons.”
In practice, the IILA prevents Canadians visiting domestic wine regions outside of their home province from legally bringing home liquid souvenirs of their vacation. It also prevents Canadian boutique wineries, who may not have wines on liquor store shelves, from shipping wines to customers in other provinces. (This is why variations on “Sorry, B.C. residents only” appear on many wineries’ online ordering pages.)
Hicken, who has run the website winelaw.ca for the past 3 years, says he receives one inquiry about every 2 days on this matter. Frequently, he says, these queries come from people who have tried to send bottles of wine as a gift, only to have their package refused by Canada Post or FedEx.
“It’s a huge issue from a consumer angle,” he says.
The people who make the wine are concerned about the consumers as well.
“We have good relationships with the liquor boards across the country and many of them are trying to increase their sales of VQA wines, but they only have so much shelf space and we’ve got a growing wine industry,” says Dan Paszkowski, president of the Canadian Vintners Association (CVA). “It’s extremely difficult when you’re running a retail store and consumers come either physically to your stop — tourists from out of province — or you get a phone call from a consumer who liked your product and would like to buy more wine and we’re in the unenviable position of having to say ‘Sorry, we can’t ship you any.’"
The CVA has been working with liquor boards to come to a solution, Paszkowski says, but still needs to find a way to meet consumer demands and take advantage of modern commerce, possibly through a personal exemption under the IILA. He says he believes wine sales through provincial liquor boards would still far exceed direct-to-consumer sales.
“There wasn’t a Canadian wine industry or electronic commerce back in 1928, and the rest of the world is using all those forms of media, like Twitter and Facebook, YouTube, wine clubs to be able to sell their wine and they’re doing it very successfully. We’d like to do the same thing for our consumers.”
Sandra Oldfield, co-owner and winemaker at Tinhorn Creek Vineyards, says she doesn’t see Mulligan’s actions as a challenge to the liquor boards, but to the law itself.
“If we didn’t see validity in being in the liquor boards, we wouldn’t be in them,” she says. Tinhorn Creek has wines listed in B.C., Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario, she says. Still, she says, she would prefer it if the liquor boards had no such law to adhere to.
“I’m in full agreement with not tweaking the law. I’d like to see it gone. I think the easiest way to do that is to challenge it in the courts rather than legislatively. So I think that’s a good route to go.”
A legislative change might happen first, however, courtesy of a private member’s motion from Ron Cannan, Member of Parliament for Kelowna-Lake Country in B.C.
In November, Cannan tabled Motion 601, designed to amend the IILA to allow consumers to purchase wine directly from Canadian wineries. If this motion passed, it would allow Ottawa to approach the provinces with the backing of Parliament to negotiate conditions for this to take place, Cannan says, adding that there is “much more chance of success,” through this route than by unilaterally imposing new legislation on the provinces.
Motion 601 died when the election was called, but Cannan says he plans to table the motion again. It usually takes about 2 years to get a private member’s bill through Parliament, he says, but he is “hopeful” that it will take less time.
“It’s certainly mixed messages. We need to support our Canadian producers and that’s what we’re trying to do,” Cannan says.
In Mulligan’s opinion, it will be Cannan’s efforts that ultimately bring about the end of the IILA.
“There’s just too many voices. It needs a single voice, a single person to lead the charge and I think Ron Cannan…I think he’s the guy. He’s driven to do this,” Mulligan says.
In the meantime, a spokesperson for the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission (AGLC), the body governing liquor imports in the province that Mulligan will be crossing into, says the organization is more concerned with wineries that break the rules than with individuals. In 2009, the AGLC sent out letters to wineries and couriers who shipped wine to Alberta customers, notifying them that they were in violation of the IILA.
“We’re not focusing on Albertans who travel to B.C. and bring home wine as a souvenir of their trip. Our concern is with larger purchases over the Internet. And what we’re saying to B.C. wineries is that if you want to do business in Alberta and sell wine to Albertans, do it legally,” says Lynn Hutchings-Mah, adding that more than 80 B.C. wineries have products listed in the Alberta market, which can be found on alberta-liquor-guide.com.
Internet purchases have an impact on small businesses, such as agents and retail liquor stores in Alberta, and also on government revenues, Hutchings-Mah says.
As the IILA is federal legislation, Hutchings-Mah says that it is up to the RCMP to decide how to approach Mulligan’s case.
The RCMP is aware of Mulligan’s plans, but has no plans to have an officer present at the border when he crosses, says Sgt. Patrick Webb, a Calgary-based spokesperson with the force.
But Mulligan, himself a former Mountie, says he was never out to get arrested — he just wanted to make a statement.
“All of us are willing to pay for our wines, we just don’t want to have to break the law in order to take it home with us,” he says.
Photo: Stephen Dyrgas
