Wonders of Wine and Food

Grocery Store Wines

At a recent party I hosted in honour of my wife's birthday. One of our friends arrived with three bottles of wine. Greatly appreciated, as two were whites. I prefer a good white wine for these types of gathering. The other was a red wine called Contra Diction. It was a merlot.

I did not recognize the name or the label. On the back it said " Contradiction Montreal, Quebec". Oh good I thought an opportunity to try a Quebec wine.

However, a little research led to disappointment. This was a grocery store wine. Commonly know as a cellared in Canada wine. In March of 2018, the Cellared in Canada or CIC labelled wine is officially illegal. The deceptive packaging has been outlawed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) who announced the approval of new wine label designations to replace “Cellared in Canada”. Replacing the current label designation “Cellared in Canada from imported and/or domestic wines” is “international blend from imported and domestic wines”, for imported wines. For domestically-produced wines, the new term is “international blend from domestic and imported wines.” The Contra Diction was so marked in very small print on the back label.

These imported wines can actually be quite good. However, they can also be, shell we say no so good. The main purpose seems to be to produce a cheaper wine to fix most consumers budget" Since workers in Canada are paid higher than most other countries. These wines are cheaper to produce. Why are Cellared in Canada so popular? One reason is they have a lower price point than VQA wines. Another may be that the names are familiar to us dating back into the 70 and 80s such as Hochtaler and Bright's Wines.

Only in Quebec have I actually seen wines referred to as Grocery Store wines. However if you Google the term Contradiction Merlot and Bodacious pop up.

Be careful when searching for a good wine

A google search for Hidden Treasure winery produced no actual winery but

Hidden Treasure Argentinian red wine | Metro
https://www.metro.ca › ... › Wines, Cocktails & Coolers › Red Wine


Hidden Treasure South African red wine | Metro
https://www.metro.ca › ... › Wines, Cocktails & Coolers › Red Wine


Both links led to the same page lacking any information about the wine or country of origin.

A different website listed Hidden Treasure as wine from Spain.

I like Canada's true VQA wines!