BUREAUCRACY IS KEEPING THE BEST WINE OFF ONTARIO SHELVES.

How bureaucracy is keeping Ontario’s and nowhere near your dining table best wine off liquor store shelves Claudia McNeilly

In the middle of Prince Edward County, on a late summer evening that is cooler than it should be, 20 of the world’s best wine writers and sommeliers gather around a long live edge wood table inside Norman Hardie Winery. Their laptops are propped open beside thousands of dollars’ worth of award-winning chardonnay, pinot noir and cabernet franc. The screw cap of each bottle is marked with numbers and letters scribbled in sharpie: 15, 2013, SS 15.

For half an hour, the wine is administered like mouthwash at the dentist. The pouring, swishing and spitting of wine almost has a rhythm to it. The only competition that the cacophonic sound faces is the crackling from Hardie’s famous wood-fired pizza oven.

Eventually, somewhere between the 10th and 20th tasting, the previously somber mood unravels into delirium. “Well this one tastes like a slap on the ass,” one of the writers announces after spitting a mouthful of pinot noir into his spittoon. The room erupts into laughter, revealing a collection of plumstained teeth.

I’m the only one who doesn’t get the joke, quickly gulping another large mouthful in hopes of gaining some shred of the greater understanding that seems to have graced everyone except me. But the wine remains decidedly slap-free. It tastes like red wine, albeit a version of red wine that oozes with chilling, peppery flavour; unlike any Ontario wine I have ever tasted before.

I have always thought of Ontario wine as a last resort. It is the inoffensive bottle of pinot grigio or merlot that you purchase at Wine Rack simply because the Liquor Control Board of Ontario store is closed and there is nothing else available. Many Ontarians might consider reluctant visits to a Wine Rack and choosing between each store’s limited selection of cider and Ontario wine as something of a rite of passage. You go as a last resort, certainly not because you’re craving a particular bottle of wine that’s available only there.

For better or worse, the store’s aisles of Jackson-Triggs, Naked Grape and Inniskillin – the province’s largest wineries – have come to represent the entirety of Ontario wine. If there were better wine varieties being made in the province, surely those of us who live here would have heard of them by now.

We’ve grown so accustomed to these brands that it may come as a surprise to learn that many local wineries are making wines that far surpass the bottles at Wine Rack and the LCBO – and they are gaining awards and international recognition along the way. The only problem is that these wineries have found it nearly impossible to sell their bottles to the public.

This is because all wine made in Ontario needs to pass through the Vintners Quality Alliance’s tasting panel if it is to be sold at Wine Rack and the LCBO.

Norman Hardie’s wines are notorious for failing the tasting panel multiple times, and eventually going to the appeals panel for approval. Most infamously, his 2008 County Chardonnay, which famed American wine writer Matt Kramer dubbed one of the best new-world Chardonnays he has ever tasted, failed six separate sets of VQA tasters before eventually passing in appeals. Pearl-Morissette is another of the province’s wineries that has developed a cult-like following among wine writers and sommeliers. It named its Riesling “Cuvee Black Ball” after it failed VQA in 2010, and again in 2012 and 2014. The winery eventually decided to erect a black ball on each bottle in place of the missing VQA Ontario certification logo.

This is a situation unique to Ontario, a place where bureaucracy already abounds thanks to a Crown corporation that retails and distributes alcohol throughout the province. It’s also a situation for which there is no shortage of irony.

The result of VQA’s endeavours has been to keep some of the province’s best wines off liquor store shelves – even though it was created to do just the opposite. In 1988, a group of Ontario wineries started VQA as a voluntary, self-regulated organization designed to keep bad and faulty Ontario wines away from consumers. They hoped that the regulation system would reassure consumers about the quality of Ontario wines, ultimately boosting their own profit margins and helping a young wine industry grow.

VQA’s efforts to control and grow the wine industry were successful enough to encourage British Columbia to establish a similar set of standards in 1990. In 2000, VQA was appointed by the Ontario government as Ontario’s Wine Authority. VQA production standards became part of Ontario law, and the group began operating with authorities granted by the provincial government.

Today, VQA Ontario continues to exercise its authority under the VQA Act, remaining accountable to the Minister of Government and Consumer Services. It oversees everything from winemaking techniques, labelling requirements and flavour profiles for Ontario wine. As part of its winemaking control, it owns the rights to terms like “Ontario,” “Niagara” and “Ice wine,” which it prohibits non-VQA wines from using on labels or packaging.

While these restrictions create a fair share of marketing nightmares for non-VQA wines, there is an element of quality control to the practice that makes sense. VQA also continues to invest inordinate sums of money into promoting Ontario wines, regularly paying for wine writers from around the globe to tour the province and familiarize themselves with Ontario’s most under-appreciated wines. It’s easy to understand how an organization devoted to the quality assurance and promotion of a growing industry is important.

What becomes less easy to grasp is VQA’s white-knuckle grip over the taste of Ontario wine. During the VQA certification process, a tasting panel comprised of anonymous LCBO product consultants whose identities are kept secret tastes each wine to determine whether the wine’s flavour meets a predetermined list of criteria. If the wine does not meet the criteria, then it does not receive VQA Ontario certification.

According to VQA, all taste tests are done blind, and its expert team of hired product consultants are not aware of what winery has produced the wine that is being examined. However, the anonymity provided to the tasting panel has created a lack of accountability in the wine industry, and their tendency to fail the same wines that end up being heralded by the world’s best wine critics has infuriated winemakers.

“It’s ridiculous that a panel of LCBO product consultants, who are not as well-versed as the world’s best sommeliers and wine critics, have the final say in determining what makes a good wine and what doesn’t,” says Pearl-Morisette’s general manager Milton Mednick.

VQA’s slogan is “taste the place in your glass,” and their mission has always been to promote great Ontario wines. So why are some of the province’s best wines failing a taste test meant to ensure quality?

While the wine industry has grown a significant amount in the last 40 years, the VQA has failed to keep up in its three decades of existence. In 1974, there were only six wineries in Ontario. That number has since exploded to 180 with 17,000 acres of vines. Once limited to a small handful of vineyards at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario wineries are scattered across the province at Georgian Bay, Prince Edward County, Lake Erie’s north shore and Pelee Island. Many of these areas have never made wine

WHY ARE SOME OF THE PROVINCE’S BEST WINES FAILING A TASTE TEST MEANT TO ENSURE QUALITY?

before, and they are working with the unique soils and climates to create vintages with distinct regional tastes. In the case of Prince Edward County, this means that some wines end up having high reductive notes because of the area’s pH levels and limestone rich soils.

Unfortunately, VQA has decided reductive notes should be considered a fault in wine, and the tasting panel only gives certification to wines that it considers faultfree. This fault-free certification – which at first may sound reassuring – is the root cause of the problem in a young winemaking province like Ontario. “When I make wines, I know exactly which will pass through VQA and which won’t,” says Norman Hardie. “But the pressure to pass is too high. So what do you do? You make something clean and straight down the middle that’s guaranteed to pass. The trouble is that Ontario is still a very young winemaking region, and we are only just beginning to discover what our wines can taste like, never mind what they are supposed to taste like.”

Many of the world’s greatest wines have naturally occurring faults, which are the result of the soils and wild fermentation processes used to make them. In other words, some of France’s best wines would not pass VQA certification because their high reductive notes would be considered faulty.

“The whole issue of wine faults is a complicated one,” says awardwinning wine writer and plant biologist Dr. Jamie Goode. “Some faults, such as cork taint, are always a problem if they are present. But with others it depends on level and context. Some of the top white Burgundies have a bit of match stick-smelling reduction, and the spicy, gamey notes of brettanomyces (a naturally occurring yeast considered a fault in wine production) works well in some wine styles, so it’s a tricky business.”

Many smaller Ontario wineries have begun experimenting with naturally occurring faults by fermenting their wines with wild yeast. The technique involves making wine with yeast that is harvested off grape skins in the vineyard. It offers a complete departure from the winemaking processes of large wineries like Jackson-Triggs and Inniskillin, which use conventional yeast bought from a supplier to make wine.

Adding conventional yeast to grape juice is a bit like buying insurance. It’s a safety net that takes much of the guesswork out of winemaking and helps to ensure that the wine tastes the same every time. But while it can guarantee drinkability, it can also stifle the terroir of a particular vintage, otherwise known as a wine’s unique ability to taste of a place – a direct contradiction to VQA’s slogan.

Ontario’s boldest wild fermented wines have torched a path for what is possible in the young winemaking region, fuelling excitement along the way. However, they have also created entirely new flavour profiles that VQA’s tasting panel has been ill-equipped to handle.

In the case of Pearl-Morisette’s Cuvee Black Ball Riesling, the wild yeast used during the winemaking process gave the wine a dry minerality. This unexpected flavour was the source of much excitement from sommeliers and critics. But it also meant that the wine couldn’t pass VQA’s tasting panel because it was unable to tick the boxes of the predetermined riesling category. After failing the tasting panel, Pearl-Morisette received a note from VQA stating that their riesling was “atypical.”

The failure to pass some of the province’s most daring wines has revealed a serious defect in Ontario’s winemaking system. In its current form, VQA is stifling innovation more than it is encouraging it. Despite these blatant shortcomings, VQA maintains that its tasting panel is perfectly suited to oversee winemaking in Ontario.

“One of the strengths of our model is our ability to be flexible and responsive to both winemaking and consumer trends,” says VQA Executive Director Laurie MacDonald in an email. “VQA brings together many different producers, mostly small and with many different business models, but all with the common vision of making good quality wine from 100 per cent Ontario grapes. We typically see regulatory amendments at least once a year, all initiated by winery requests and driven forward on industry consensus. In fact, entire new wine categories have been created in the past few years for wines made from dried grapes, effervescent wines and skin-fermented white wines.”

These advances are admittedly better than nothing, but Ontario winemakers have spent years requesting that skin-fermented (otherwise known as skin contact) wines qualify for VQA certification before VQA was able to comply. And the move should hardly be seen as radical or revolutionary. Skin-fermented wines have been acknowledged as legitimate wine varieties in old world wine production for thousands of years.

Most people are comfortable with – or at least accepting of – some level of government intervention in their lives, but we’re not discussing financial regulations, prescription drugs or taxes. We’re talking about accessing and consuming wine in Ontario, a province where liquor sales are already monitored by the LCBO.

Ontario is the one of the only winemaking regions in the world with a tasting panel that not only adheres to such strict benchmarks, but also holds the exclusive right to determine the passing and failing of wine. While British Columbia also has a tasting panel, it isn’t as critical to the province’s winemaking because B.C. wine does not need to be B.C. VQA certified to be sold in liquor stores. There are more than 800 private wine stores in the province, many of which sell uncertified B.C. wines.

Because of its cool climate and limestone-rich soils, Ontario has been called the world’s “Least Known Great Wine Zone.” By allowing a government monopoly to dictate the flavour of the province’s wines, the province has encouraged winemakers to be safe instead of innovative. This has led the region to miss out on taking full advantage of its distinct terroir, preventing it from emerging as a winemaking province that can truly compete with not just the rest, but the best of the world.

The average wine drinker may not care about the wild fermented dry rieslings that they’re missing out on in allowing VQA to regulate Ontario wines. After all, Wine Rack and the LCBO sell plenty of drinkable vintages that are admittedly good enough. Yet, having middleof-the-road bottles represent Ontario wines is like allowing a store full of Budweiser and Smirnoff to represent all beers and spirits.

It may not matter to those who only care to drink Budweiser, but it erodes the reputation of the entire industry. It also limits individuals in their ability to purchase what they want, and winemakers to make what they want – ultimately preventing everyone who drinks Ontario wine from having a choice.

The opportunity to sample these wines shouldn’t be dependent on an exclusive experience taking place on the long live edge wood table inside Norman Hardie Winery. It should be something anyone in the province can bring back to their own dining table – if they so choose.

THE OPPORTUNITY TO SAMPLE THESE WINES SHOULDN’T BE DEPENDENT ON AN EXCLUSIVE EXPERIENCE.