Grape growers question LCBO buying policy

by SUSAN MANN

Why does the provincial-government controlled Liquor Control Board buy more foreign wine than local brands?

That’s the question Grape Growers of Ontario wants answered. At its Media Day on April 1, Grape Growers announced it’s proposing meetings be held for key stakeholders in the wine industry and the provincial government to begin discussing the existing wine distribution network and how it can be improved to boost sales of domestic wines.

The Liquor Control Board distributes Ontario wines along with foreign brands in the province. But since it buys more foreign than local wines, Debbie Zimmerman, Grape Growers CEO, says “we don’t even own our own market in our own country or in our own province.”

Zimmerman says they’d like to know why the policies at the Liquor Control Board are structured to favour foreign imported products instead of Ontario ones?

She says they’ve been asking this question for some time but they never get an answer.

In the Grape Growers press release issued for Media Day, it says Ontario wines have a 44 per cent share of the domestic market, while most other wine-producing regions have a much larger share of their domestic market. For example, Australia has a 90 per cent share, California has a 63 per cent share of the entire U.S. market and New Zealand has a 57 per cent share. New Zealand doesn’t import grapes for wine whereas Ontario included blended wines as Ontario wines.

Zimmerman says the Ontario government has done a great job helping the industry so far but “what we want to talk about is how we get these great products we produce to the marketplace so consumers can buy them.”

Grape Growers would like have an initial meeting with government and other stakeholders before summer but “we realize it may not be until after October” when the provincial election is completed, she says. BF