7 reasons to Drink Canadian Wine

Note: This column also ran in the Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, Montreal Gazette and other Postmedia newspapers across the country.

Cheers to Canada

Natalie MacLean on why we should toast July 1^st with local wines.

From coast to coast, more than 700 wineries across this country offer us a taste of home. Yet imports own 70% of our domestic wine market.

Why don’t we drink more of our own wines? Three factors stand out.

We’re not aware of how much Canadian wine has improved in the last five years, let alone in the 150 years we’ve been making it. We still hold prejudices that are as dated as lava lamps. We’re also bound by provincial regulatory barriers that make it more difficult to ship a wine from B.C. to Ontario than a handgun.

Here are seven reasons to celebrate Canada Day with wine that reflects the richness of our land.

Taste The other six reasons don’t matter unless the wines taste great, and many Canadian wines do. As someone who has reviewed and rated wines for twenty years, I’ve seen, and tasted, the dramatic rise in Canadian wine quality. They also have the international competition medals and scores to prove it. Canadian wines suffer from the Céline-Dion-Shania-Twain Syndrome: They need validation abroad before they’re accepted on their home turf. Well, they’ve been there, done that.

Selection Icewine, the dessert elixir, put Canada on the global winemaking map and remains our leading export. However, dry still and sparkling wines now capture my attention and taste buds as a wine writer. We excel at classic grapes such as chardonnay, riesling, pinot noir, cabernet franc and gamay.

Canada’s geography is one of the largest and most diverse in the world, from the western Rockies to the eastern Bay of Fundy. Therefore, riesling from British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia will each offer wildly different expressions in the glass.

Yet most of them aren’t in the government liquor stores because they don’t produce enough wine to fill the big chains. But small is good when it comes to wine because it’s often artisanal. So buy directly from the wineries as most will ship to your doorstep. Even better, visit them this summer. They’re located in gorgeous landscapes with lots of other activities to do from bike rides and ballooning to spa and theatre.

Versatility Canada’s cool climate produces grapes that aren’t loaded with sugar, so they don’t ferment to high alcohol. Low-alcohol wines don’t overwhelm food with heat or sugar, yet still have lots of flavour. When you visit wine country, you can enjoy the pairing menus wineries offer in their restaurants.

Value If you think Canadian wines are expensive, you’re doing it wrong. Comparing our wines to those from warm climates that don’t have to battle frost, mildew and other costly threats is like comparing ballet to football. Our wines will never be the hulking defensive linebacker, but they do have effortless grace to pirouette with pleasure on your palate. Our pinot noir, chardonnay and sparkling wines are a third of the price of those from France. Yes, they taste different because they come from different places, but the quality is on the same parallel.

Economy Wine is the highest value-added agricultural product we produce in this country. Every bottle of 100% Canadian wine contributes $80 to our economy versus only $18 for an imported wine, injecting more than $11.6 billion into our economy every year.

Jobs The wine industry creates 45,000 jobs both directly and indirectly through tourism, restaurants, hotels and manufacturing. These jobs are often in rural areas on family-owned grape farms, most of which have fewer than 20 employees.

Environment Drinking local wines means not shipping wine in weighty bottles thousands of kilometres. Many Canadian wineries farm organically and/or sustainably. Voting with your dollars encourages these practices. Vacationing in wine country often means a drive rather than a flight. It also means that these family farms might survive for the next generation.