I was in Calgary recently to judge wines for the International Value Wine Awards. This new wine competition, sponsored by Wine Access magazine, aims to identify the best under-$25 wines available in Canada.
To qualify, a wine must be available somewhere in Canada. It could be widely available in several provincial liquor stores or it could be on sale in a single private wine store in Alberta, Nova Scotia or elsewhere.
As for the price cap, a wine has to be selling in at least one place in the country for less than $25, even if it costs more in other parts. As a rule, wine is cheapest in Ontario, so a wine would qualify if it cost $24.95 at the LCBO, but $29.95 in British Columbia.
About 1,000 wines were entered and the organizers of the awards said the vast majority were in the $12 to $15 range. In other words, these were the kinds of wine that line LCBO shelves. The results will be announced early in September and I'll do a column on the winners then. In the meantime, let me share a few observations.
First, judging in this competition was a great opportunity to taste widely available wines blind. Normally when I taste wines for this column, for the Winecurrent.com newsletter or for magazines, I know what I'm tasting. And although I try not to pre-judge, it's difficult not to be influenced one way or the other when I know what I'm tasting.
When you taste blind, all you know is what's in the glass in front of you - although competition judges are usually told the grape variety or blend so they can assess the wine's type. That is, a Sauvignon Blanc should taste like a Sauvignon Blanc and Syrah like a Syrah.
That said, I was pretty impressed with most of the wines I tasted in the competition. Given that they generally cost under $15, they offered good to very good value and they suggest that Canadian consumers are being well served.
Within each category of wines (aromatic whites, Italian reds, Cabernet Sauvignons, unoaked Chardonnays, and so on) there was generally good variation in style. This is good news. With the ever-intensifying concentration of ownership in the wine industry, there's fear that wine will become increasingly standardized as producers seek out the vast middle ground of consumer preference.
It happened in politics, so why not in wine?
But my experience from this awards tasting tells me that this dumbing down of wine styles hasn't happened yet.
Of course, the 1,000 wines in competition is a small percentage of under-$25 wines available in Canada, and it's impossible to know how representative they are. Only a handful of Ontario wines were entered (wines had to be entered by producers or agents) and I hope Ontario wineries pay more attention to this competition next year.
Overall, though, even before the results are announced, I'd say the International Value Wine Awards bring good news to Canadian wine consumers, and that is there is a lot of very good wine out there at very reasonable prices.