Around the point in the new year when the promise of better weather begins to be more than a fantasy, Mark Cuff begins to think about what kind of wine events he might organize for the summer. The founder of Toronto’s 20-odd-year-old organic wine agency, The Living Vine, consults with his team for ideas. This year, the meeting took place in the middle of the tariff crisis that continues today, and they decided their summer event theme would be “Elbows Up.”
Cuff, who is a friend and former client of mine, explained on the phone that once the theme was decided, the details for the July 12 event quickly fell into place. Though founded as an importer, because of Canada’s weird provincial liquor markets, The Living Vine represents wineries in Nova Scotia (Lightfoot & Wolfville), Quebec (Fleurie), B.C. (Rigour & Whimsy), and Ontario (Therianthropy). This would be a pan-Canadian wine tasting, with wineries from coast to coast in one place.
A drive across Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway revealed the obvious venue. Stuck in traffic beside Fort York, Cuff envisioned the garrison being called into its defensive duty against Yankee aggression once again. And with over 200 years since its last service in the War of 1812, Cuff knew it was about time.
Cuff likes to quote Prime Minister Mark Carney about having “one Canadian economy, not 13.” The provinces and territories, which govern all aspects of the trade in alcohol in Canada, impose the same mark-ups on out-of-province made Canadian wines as they do those made in foreign countries. Cuff explained that in Ontario, that’s a flat 71 percent at the LCBO. In Quebec, it varies between 50 and 135 percent at the SAQ. In B.C., additional costs are exacerbated by restricted access to third-party warehousing, so wineries must sell directly to their customers, like restaurants, before they can even ship.
Some wineries will ship individual orders across provincial lines anyway. That practice blew up into the great Alberta-B.C. Wine War, “resolved” last summer with B.C. producers agreeing to collect and pay Alberta taxes on direct-to-consumer sales to that province. Ironically, this columnist knows of at least one Alberta wine club that will ship imported foreign wines to Ontario members, for whom the wine is cheaper because of comparatively lower taxes.
Cuff and his collaborators on the Elbows Up wine festival, like Therianthopy winemaker David Eiberg, want the new push for inter-provincial free trade to include wine in a real way, so that producers can actually distribute their wines in other provinces. Apart from allowing Ontario wine enthusiasts to taste Canadian wines that are hard to find in the province, Cuff and company have included an advocacy component to the Elbows Up project. Canadians from all over are encouraged to sign an online petition calling for governments to “Abolish Interprovincial Trade Barriers for Canadian Wine.”
Cuff is confident that if more Canadians were aware of the restrictions on Canadian wine sales in Canada, they would demand change. He hopes efforts like the Elbows Up wine festival will help spread the word and put pressure on the provinces. He said that as far as he knows, the event is the first all-Canadian wine tasting festival in Toronto and hopes others will be held across the country.
A 2022 research study released by Wine Growers Canada claims every dollar spent on Canadian wine in Canada will create over three dollars in business revenue. It also claims that the average bottle of Canadian wine sold in Canada “generates approximately $11 of business revenue, $6.15 of tax revenue and $9.58 of wages.” That study put the value of the Canadian wine industry at $5 billion, though I have seen other figures, put out by wine-friendly organizations, that claim more than twice that figure.
The value of wine production and sales may be hard to precisely quantify. Anecdotally, however, it’s certain that every winery touches on many other sectors of the economy in a relatively unique way. The production of a bottle of wine encompasses at least three distinct areas of operation, often all on the same property.
First is the agricultural: the farm or vineyard where the grapes for the wine are grown, with all of its labour, mechanical, and field inputs. Second is the factory, the winery, where the grapes are crushed, turned into wine, tested in a lab, bottled, labelled, stored or handled into boxes, and shipped out. Third is the office that runs the business, keeps the payroll, and does the accounting and the marketing, so the wine actually gets sold.
If we made and bought more of our own wine, we would be economically better for it. The framers of Confederation understood this and enshrined it in the Constitution of 1867. Section 121 states, “All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces.”
Unfortunately, economics is not the only factor involved in provincial regulation of wine. In R v. Comeau, otherwise known as the “Free the Beer” case, the Supreme Court ruled that it wasn’t unconstitutional for New Brunswick to fine one of its citizens for buying his beer in Quebec since provincial liquor laws were meant to serve other public goods than simply trade. A hundred years ago, that would have been to curb vice and moral decay; now, the excuse for lucrative tariffs is public health policy.
I asked Cuff if he thought the premiers would use the excuse of public health policy to weasel out of finally getting rid of inter-provincial trade restrictions on Canadian wine. He hoped not, adding that Canadians were changing the way they consumed alcohol anyway and were smart enough to make their own decisions. “We need to change the way we do business in Canada,” he said, underscoring his belief that this was about what he considers supporting a national economy.
When I talked to Cuff earlier this week, he told me ticket sales, just in the first few days, were strong and he anticipated a sell-out. I said, Elbows Up—the wine festival—sounded like an idea fit for its time, and I asked him if he had any advice for anyone in another city or province who was interested in organizing their own Canadian wine festival. His answer was unequivocal: “Go for it, and if you want any help, get in touch.”
Malcolm Jolley is a roving wine and food journalist, beagler, and professional house guest. Based mostly in Toronto, he publishes a sort…
