Thursday, January 04, 2007

VQA Act bares its teeth, and gets its own space

News from the VQA website that the very first charges have been laid under the seven-year old Ontario VQA legislation. Here's a quote:

[An Ontario winery] was charged with several counts of using terms regulated under the VQA Act without the approval of the wine authority. The charges stem from allegations that the winery used the regulated terms “Icewine”, “Late Harvest Wine” and “Estate Bottled” on labels of wines that had not been monitored and tested by VQA Ontario. These charges are expected to be heard by the Provincial Offenses Court in January 2007.

In a not completely unrelated story, Richard Best (The frugal oenophile) reports in his latest newsletter on a change in shelving policy at the LCBO, Ontario's government controlled liquor and wine retailing corporation, which will finally see imported blends of Cellared in Canada wines moved off VQA-designated shelves and into their own section. If that seems like a meaningless distinction, think of it as making sure you know the difference between delicious and locally produced all-pork sausages from your butcher, and a mass market hot dog. Both are good for their own purposes, but they shouldn't be confused for one another.

If you haven't subscribed to Richard Best's newsletter, do so now.

No comments: