Uncork Ontario

April 10th Wine Chat: April 10th (confirmed): Screw Caps, Corks, or Synthetics Closures – What’s Best?

There’s lots of reasons for and against the various types of bottle closures. Cork had a long history of failure due to TCA (“cork taint”) which drove the innovations in different types of closures. But now cork has improved significantly, there are issues with the newer, non-cork closures, and everyone has an opinion on what is best. And then there are new advances with glass stoppers, people using crown caps, and other ways of sealing a bottle. We’ll talk about some of the pros and cons of each of the different types of closures in this week’s #ONWineChat.

Interested in some background reading? Here’s a few interesting articles (feel free to recomnend additional links!):

A very dated but decent introduction to the issue from Jamie Goode:

Wall Street journal article about plastic enclosure market and Nomacorc specifically:

Wine Access experiment:

Which is Greener article from Wine Access:

Another look at cork vs screwcap.

Another post by Jamie Goode that touches on the reductive possibilities of screw caps.

The last word (almost) on closures.

And a funny video from Ed Madronich at Flat Rock Cellars on Ed Madronich FRC on the debate.

New! Glass corks – Wine Spectator ?

New! A Wikipedia Wikipedia on alternate closures.

New! Crown caps on wine bottles just like the old stubby beer bottles. Crown Caps?

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April 3rd Wine Chat – All About Market Access in Ontario

The theme for this week’s chat covers all things related to market access for Ontario wineries:

April 3rd (confirmed): Market access, #mywineshop, LCBO strike(?), Grape Growers 50% initiative, wine in corner stores & more.

I figured it might be good to get some background material published so we’re all talking about the same things. Here’s a list and some background info. I will add any other links people think are pertinent.

Background:
For those of you that don’t know, here’s how a winery can sell wine to consumers:

1) At the winery door (retail tasting room)
2) Online, through a wine club (their own or another such as winesplash.ca or savvy.ca)
3) In restaurants (known as licensee sales)
4) If they are lucky, the LCBO picks up <20% of the wines produced in Ontario each year. I know - you are saying wait a minute...you forgot number 5), those wine shops in my local grocery store. Alas, yes, there are some private wine kiosks/stores, however the majority of the retail licenses are held by the big wineries that owned and operated stores like 'The Wine Rack' prior to the Free Trade Agreement (their stores were grandfathered, and they, of course, feel no inclination to share their retail licenses with the dozens of wineries that have appeared since and have no access to these licenses). Articles on the Different Initiatives:

For some background reading before tomorrow night’s chat, here’s a few good articles that will be updated on the fly.

Ontario wines fight for market share at home.

Possible LCBO Strike?

Ontario to see beer, spirits in 10 grocery stores

MyWineShop

Challenges Ahead for VQA Wines

Rick Van Sickle on “Boneheaded Plan”

Legal Battle Could End LCBO

Constitutional Challenge

Just Added April 3: Tim Hudak vs the LCBO

So have a read, then join us to chat Wednesday April 3rd at 10PM!