A team of wines has just cantered into the LCBO from the West: Wild Horse Canyon. They are a sauvignon blanc, a chardonnay, a merlot and a shiraz, and two are reviewed today.
They're of interest because they're pretty good value and because they are blends of wine from British Columbia, Washington and California. As such, they're classified as "Cellared in Canada" wines -- a category that's very controversial.
"Cellared in Canada" wines (more on the name in a minute) are blends of Canadian wine and a larger proportion of non-Canadian wine. In years when the Canadian grape harvest is small and producers want to use most of their limited crop for VQA wines, the Canadian component in "Cellared in Canada" wines can be as little as one per cent.
Now, there's nothing wrong with blending wines from different regions. As long as the wine is good quality, do you care if you're drinking something that's 90 per cent Chilean and 10 per cent Ontario merlot? Or 95 per cent French and five per cent Ontario chardonnay?
Yet there are problems with "Cellared in Canada" blends: with rare exceptions, the information is barely legible on the label; some producers use the same label design for their "Cellared in Canada" wines as for their VQA wines (minus the VQA designation, of course); and "Cellared in Canada" wines are far too often found on the VQA shelves in the LCBO.
Finally, what on earth does "Cellared in Canada" mean to most people? That the wine was aged here? In fact, non-Canadian wine is imported in bulk, some Canadian wine is added to it and it's bottled. Cellared? I don't think so.
At best, "Cellared in Canada" confuses consumers. At worst, it misleads them.
What's different about Wild Horse Canyon is that it declares boldly on the front label (although the grey on black of the reds' labels is hard to read) that the wine comes from three regions -- one province and two states -- and all produce quality wine. (I mean, it's not wine from Saskatchewan, North Dakota and Georgia.)
But I guess I'm hard to please, because I do have a quibble -- more than a quibble, actually -- with the wording that precedes the province/states: "West Coast Appellation."
I wish they hadn't done that, because "appellation" has a quite specific meaning in the world of wine, where it generally means a legally recognized wine region. Burgundy is an appellation, so is the Barossa valley, and so is Niagara Peninsula. So is B.C., when wines are labelled "VQA British Columbia." Appellations are critically important as far as wine is concerned, as many people like wines from specific wine regions.
Still, I'll take this formulation over the simple and misleading "Cellared in Canada" designation any day. I wish the key players in the Canadian wine industry would take truth in advertising seriously.
Two wild horses, a dragon and shiny red metal bottle today.