All Olympic wines should be VQA

Something isn't right in Niagara's grape and wine industry when a major player is saying there aren't enough grapes to make quality VQA wines at a time when Niagara growers had to dump 4,000 tonnes of grapes on the ground because they had no buyer.

That is a major discrepancy.

That there was a major grape surplus last year is no secret. The province granted $4 million to the growers to help cushion the blow. But while the growers and the wineries make strides towards a long-term plan for the industry -- a condition placed on them by Premier Dalton McGuinty when he gave them the bailout -- one of the largest wineries in the province is saying it doesn't have enough grapes to make all of its official Olympic wines VQA wines.

The Olympic wines are coming from Niagara and British Columbia labels owned by Constellation, which includes Jackson-Triggs and Inniskillin.

The company made headlines last week when it announced its next bottling of Jackson Triggs Esprit Chardonnay and Merlot will be VQA, the only assurance consumers have that the product in the bottle was made from 100 per cent Ontario grapes.

That is great news.

However, Esprit Shiraz and Esprit Sauvignon Blanc will likely remain blended wines, containing up to 70 per cent imported grapes, but sold as cellared in Canada wines.

That news, not so much.

At the Olympics, we put our best athletes forward to compete with the best the world has to offer. In that spirit, we should expect the same from our wineries. If a bottle of wine is going to be sold as an official Olympic wine of Canada, it should be a bottle of VQA wine. Thus it will not only support our athletes (for every $10.95 bottle of Esprit sold, $1.25 goes toward the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and the Canadian Olympic team), but it will also support our struggling grape and wine industry.

Plain and simple, if there aren't enough grapes of a particular varietal to make a VQA Esprit, then that wine doesn't become an Esprit.

At the same time, as a major player in the industry, Constellation should seek out some of the many Niagara growers seeking a partnership for their crop with the intent of putting those grapes into a VQA wine supporting our Olympics.

That any cellared in Canada wines are being used to support Canada's Olympic effort is shameful, particularly at a difficult time when Niagara grape growers could use the same kind of support.