In a recent article by Beppi in the Globe, Crosariol quoted Jancis Robinson's pronouncement on the CIC issue:
“I think it is doing a disservice to real Canadian wine and its reputation abroad to continue with this misleading practice,” Ms. Robinson wrote. “It is just so difficult to take Canadian producers seriously when they are allowed to mislead the wine-buying public to this extent.”
That sounds like solid evidence of Jancis Robinson's strong feelings about the importance of producers taking care to use only local grapes.
Jancis' column in the Finanical Times on Saturday October 24th focused on another chilly northern country with a growing wine industry: Russia. Indeed, with 65,000 hectares under vine, the Russian wine industry is considerably bigger than ours. But so is Russia's population and fondness for alcohol, so that kind of acreage still isn't enough.
Perhaps you'd expect Jancis to inveigh against the local practice of importing grapes and wine and then bottling it. Here's what she said:
“Even official figures acknowledge that 70 per cent of the wine labelled as Russian is made up of cheap imports. Wine made from grapes grown in Russia accounts for just 20 per cent of all the wine sold in Russia. But sales of truly Russian wine are growing and have encouraged a recent influx of investors."
Change "Russia" to "Canada" and that paragraph could pretty much stand as is. No worries about "misleading" here - just a summary of a growing wine industry operating in a harsh climate.
For the purveyors of Cellared In Canada, the climate here is clearly harsher.
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