Is Van City A Great Wine Town – A Prelude

The well respected wine writer, Anthony Gismondi, had an interesting tidbit in the paper this weekend. He noted that the government-controlled liquor stores have a rather mundane selection of wines for the consumer to purchase. He was referring to Australia as I guess he went or is currently there. He noted how many wineries products do not get to our shores. I see the same thing with product that comes from California and Oregon.

He referred to many of the options being linked to large wine companies willing to put up with government bureaucracy and the like. i.e: bureaucracy loves bureaucracy so we get stuck with a Yellow Tail, a Yellow Label, a Fat Bastard and a Little Penguin for much of our wine choices. Lets face it, large businesses do lots of things OK, or kind of well, that’s what makes them what they are. Anything run by the government is the same way, but much worse, lets face it do monopolies do anything well?

The wine world is no different. The great wineries of the world, with a few exceptions, come from family-owned or independently-owned wineries where the people are passionate about what they produce and the product is not made in the millions of cases a year.

What does this have to do with Vancouver and its wine scene? Well just about everything. As I will write about in upcoming blogs, we are being deprived of what is interesting in the wine world, whether it be from Australia, Oregon, Washington, California, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, South Africa and YES even BC. Because trashing the government is easy, we will initially pick on the “Liq”, but I will also look at the restaurant industry and private wine shops. All contribute to the boring, ho hum wine world that is Vancouver.