Craft wineries worry they’ll be squeezed out
Slow-moving overhaul of rules ‘frustrating’ for wine makers
Sue-Ann Staff is disappointed that she probably won’t be able to get her Fancy Farm Girl Wines — from Foxy Rosé to Flirty Bubbles — on grocery store shelves anytime soon.
The fifth-generation farmer, and first to launch a vineyard on her family’s 200-year-old estate in the heart of Niagara’s wine-growing region, says small craft wineries like hers don’t stand a chance to compete with the big players if the Ontario government backs out of plans to overhaul the retail wine system.
“I’m looking to expand my business and my vineyard and grow more grapes, but I can’t do that until I have access to bigger markets,” said Staff, who studied the science and art of winemaking at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
As reported Wednesday by the Star’s Robert Benzie, Ontarians will soon be able to buy beer in some 300 supermarkets, but the more complicated expansion of wine sales in grocery stores is going to take longer to uncork, sources say, due to complications posed by international trade agreements and other challenges.
“It’s frustrating to be left on the back burner,” says Marcel Morgenstern, director of sales for Burnt Ship Bay Estate Winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
“People want access to more wines, and they should have it,” says Morgenstern, who moved to Canada from Germany 15 years ago and finds the Ontario system antiquated compared with that of other countries and provinces.
Both Burnt Ship Bay and Fancy Farm Girl are part of a four-month program that features select Ontario craft wines available in 62 LCBO stores priced from $13.95 to $19.95.
“Otherwise, I have to sell it straight from my kitchen on the farm,” said Staff, who produces just shy of 5,000 cases a year.
She and Morgenstern say it’s impossible to go up against the American-owned Wine Rack and the Canadian-owned Wine Shop, which have 268 supermarket kiosks and standalone stores selling Ontario and blended foreign bulk wine, including well-known brands Jackson-Triggs, Inniskillin and Peller Estates. (By comparison, the giants produce about two million cases a year.)
Ontario wines are key economic generators, Morgenstern noted. The industry has annual sales in excess of $675 million and employs 14,000 people.
The president of the Wine Council of Ontario, a non-profit trade association that represents 100 wineries across the province, said Wednesday “it would be a shame to miss the opportunities in front of us right now.”
“Ontario’s VQA wineries have seen tremendous growth over the last decade, including through the last several years of hard economic times. We want to build on that success, and we want to grow and innovate in order to compete in our global economy,” Richard Linley said in a statement.
Ontario could see more than $1 billion in additional revenues from wine retail reforms, added Linley.
“The biggest losers out of all this are Ontario consumers,” said Staff.
About three-quarters of wine consumed in Canada comes from other countries like France and Italy, and 60 per cent of all wine consumed is red.