Adam on Nostr: Last winter BC experienced a wicked cold snap causing 90% of grapes vines to either ...
Last winter BC experienced a wicked cold snap causing 90% of grapes vines to either die or not produce a crop for the 2024 vintage.
Our provincial gov’t came to our rescue and allowed BC Wineries to use fruit or wine from outside the province without paying markup tax that every import wine must pay.
This is going to be a major benefit for us since our fruit cost in BC is stupidly high. We pay about $7 CAD/litre while I’m getting wine from US for anywhere from $1.5 to $4/L.
Do I agree with the gov’t stepping in to “save the day”? Yes and No. I believe in free markets and people need to take ownership of their business decisions and the risks associated with them. I also think we shouldn’t be constrained to our local BC fruit as a land based winery. There are too many rules that are meant to protect our industry and they need to be stripped away so we can compete freely. It would be more challenging for us to compete locally but we would get far lower input costs.
We live in a make belief world with all the rules on top of rules to protect us. Then when they realize the rules they put in place are going to kill our industry, they temporarily remove them.
Again this will be a net benefit for us in the short term. But I just think we should have never had these stupid rules to begin with.
Btw, we didn’t get any reds from our vineyard in 2024 but we did get whites. We planted winter hardy varietals that can withstand the Canadian winters.
Pictured below are wine samples from Washington and California and my old man at a vineyard in Washington.
Our provincial gov’t came to our rescue and allowed BC Wineries to use fruit or wine from outside the province without paying markup tax that every import wine must pay.
This is going to be a major benefit for us since our fruit cost in BC is stupidly high. We pay about $7 CAD/litre while I’m getting wine from US for anywhere from $1.5 to $4/L.
Do I agree with the gov’t stepping in to “save the day”? Yes and No. I believe in free markets and people need to take ownership of their business decisions and the risks associated with them. I also think we shouldn’t be constrained to our local BC fruit as a land based winery. There are too many rules that are meant to protect our industry and they need to be stripped away so we can compete freely. It would be more challenging for us to compete locally but we would get far lower input costs.
We live in a make belief world with all the rules on top of rules to protect us. Then when they realize the rules they put in place are going to kill our industry, they temporarily remove them.
Again this will be a net benefit for us in the short term. But I just think we should have never had these stupid rules to begin with.
Btw, we didn’t get any reds from our vineyard in 2024 but we did get whites. We planted winter hardy varietals that can withstand the Canadian winters.
Pictured below are wine samples from Washington and California and my old man at a vineyard in Washington.