Unfussy Wine Enthusiasts | Wine Reviews & Articles

So, let's start off by saying that here in Canada we live in a highly regulated and controlled liquor environment where we are, generally speaking, at the mercy of provincial bodies to determine the majority of wines that we as the retail public will have access to.  That said, we have come a long way in the last 18 months with the FreeMyGrapes campaign to allow for cross-border movement of wine within Canada.  This is a work in progress but begins to move us away from the prohibition-era laws we have been previously governed by.  There are Federal and Provincial laws that need to be amended, though the Federal piece has largely been taken care of by the passing of Bill C-311 last year. So, in comparison to our American friends where there is a regulated but generally privatized liquor industry (though not in all states) our options and access to varieties of wine as consumers here in Canada has been somewhat limited (and pricey but that is a horse of a different col...

We visited Sonoma in 2004 and went to a number of wineries where we would have loved to buy more than the one or two bottles we could get on a plane (pre-liquid restriction days).  Each person at the various wineries asked where we lived and when we said Florida , we got the shoulder shrug combined with the "sucks to be you" look.  The laws back then restricted where the wineries could ship their wines.  A handful of states including Florida were on the do not ship list.  We subsequently came to find out that the laws were strongly lobbied for the middlemen in the alcohol and wine industry who wanted no wine to enter the state of Florida without passing through their hands and wallets first.  The laws have been relaxed since then due to class action lawsuits and political deals.  In Canada we are no better off, there are laws in place to limit the movement of alcohol (including wine) between provinces.  In fact, each time we went to Niaga...