The Best Value Wines from Canada

The best wines from Canada at the Wine Access 2011 International Value Wine Awards

Increasingly often, and, dare I say, finally, the wines from our own backyard taste of our home and not someone else’s. It seems we had to go through respectful nods toward Europe, glances at Australia and then big, boisterous salutations to California before finally coming into our own. How appropriate it is that we now bridge the Old World, terroir-driven style of where we came from and the fruit-forward, personality-driven character of our New World contemporaries. The confidence demonstrated by restraint in winemaking is welcome, allowing the grapes to taste like the place they are grown, rather than masking flavour with heavy-handed oak or oenological trickery. Let’s keep going in the direction of quality, now that we know which varietals are best suited to our handful of wine regions, rather than tearing out six-year-old plantings to try something new. Our vines could use some age. (Kurtis Kolt)