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To all the P.J.’s out there: Love Canadian wines or hate them, I just don’t give a shit anymore

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I long ago stopped trying to convince those who don’t/won’t drink Ontario or Canadian wine that they are missing the boat on some great wines made in their own backyard.

I just don’t give a shit anymore. I haven’t thrown in the towel; it’s just that it’s so completely and utterly silly to engage in an argument with someone who believes Canadian wines in general are terrible.

Afterall, it wasn’t that long ago that most of them were pretty awful; dreadful wines concocted from a hodgepodge of the worst hybrid grapes known to humankind.

I wouldn’t/couldn’t drink them myself, no matter how patriotic I wanted to be. Being Canadian does not mean depriving yourself of vinous pleasure.

I’m all for buying, eating and drinking local. But if Niagara cherries were sour, the beets bitter or the corn wasn’t even fit for pigs, I draw the line right there. I’m not eating eat them. Same holds true with wine.

There was a time you couldn’t pay me to drink it, but thank goodness things have changed. And if you haven’t heard that by now or at least made the effort to find out, I can’t help you and I sure as hell don’t want to argue about it. We are way past that.

The time for preaching has come and gone. You are now officially on your own.

OpusOne_Head_Shaded_RGBWhich is why a recent thread on Twitter perplexed me and annoyed me at first. I know there a lot of people out there like P.J. Taillon, who I follow on Twitter and who goes by @lefthandedrant. I don’t know P.J. personally, but I enjoy his tweets sometimes. He shows a deep love for certain kinds of wine — wines that I enjoy drinking from time to time, too. He’s a big Opus One guy, one of the finest of all the Napa properties, and so am I.

But I’m also a lover of Niagara wines, Ontario wines, Canadian wines and have been since vinifera started being planted in earnest around these parts.

P.J. obviously does not share that passion, and, in fact, judging by the flurry of tweets over the weekend (and continuing into Monday), Canadian wines are just about the worst thing he’s ever consumed: “Paint thinner” and “overpriced shit” were just a couple of his descriptions of Ontario wine.

I’m good with that. To each their own.

To be honest, if your taste buds are firmly entrenched in the Napa Valley, no Canadian winery that I know of will ever win over P.J.

We aren’t Napa up here, which in my books, is a good thing, a very good thing.

The conversation on Twitter started innocently enough.

I sent out a Tweet with an Instagram photo from judging at the Ontario Wine Awards on Friday. This is what I wrote:

Rick VanSickle@rickwine Apr 11

Getting set for a day of judging for the Ontario Wine Awards. tonyaspler offers final instructions. https://instagram.com/p/1VmW-8Nx62/

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P.J. quickly replied:

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant Apr 11

@rickwine Ontario Wine = Paint Remover. #VQA is a sham! @LCBO over priced junk! #LCBO better wine under $9 from the other side of the world.

I replied back:

Rick VanSickle@rickwine Apr 11

@lefthandedrant I think you need a trip to Niagara/Prince Edward County to have a look at what’s going on. You can’t judge by the LCBO.

And then P.J.:

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant Apr 11

@rickwine well that #Malivore crap the @LCBO is pushing at 20-30 a bottle is best boiled off and used as salad dressing! It’s all too much $

Me:

Rick VanSickle@rickwine Apr 11

@lefthandedrant Zero in on what Ontario does best: Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Right producers = world class.

P.J.:

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant Apr 11

@rickwine what needs to happen is the @LCBO gets disbanded and the monopoly pricing ends. Free Market wider selection. Corner store/off site

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant Apr 11

@rickwine who might they be?

And that was it for the next 30 hours or so and then … Paul Dearborn retweeted this on Sunday night:

Paul Dearborn retweeted a Tweet you were mentioned in

3h:

@rickwine @lefthandedrant PJ I would love to show you some of the best of Niagara @LeaningPostWine We are very capable of quality in niagara

All hell broke loose after that:

Veronica Leonard@travelprose 3h3 hours ago

@rickwine @whitbywino @lefthandedrant They are overpriced because of our liquor taxes and the fact we pay our workers a decent wage.

André Proulx@andrewinereview 3h3 hours ago

@travelprose @rickwine @whitbywino @lefthandedrant they are not overpriced… We get great quality when you get out of the el cheapo wines

Paul Dearborn@whitbywino 3h3 hours ago

@andrewinereview @travelprose @rickwine @lefthandedrant I’ve had Niagara CabSauv for $35 that I would put up again $70 Napa bottles.

André Proulx@andrewinereview 2h2 hours ago

@whitbywino @travelprose @rickwine @lefthandedrant me too. Or some Bordeaux… I know. I was there.

Paul Dearborn@whitbywino 2h2 hours ago

@andrewinereview @travelprose @rickwine @lefthandedrant I’ve also had Pinot and Chardonnay from PEC that I would put up against Burgundy

Paul Dearborn@whitbywino 2h2 hours ago

@andrewinereview @travelprose @rickwine @lefthandedrant And @Decanter picked @Tawse_Winery $38 Chardonnay as second-best outside Burgundy.

There were a few more like until P.J. caught drift of the conversation and this happened:

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant 2h2 hours ago

@travelprose @rickwine @whitbywino BULLSHIT! The @LCBO creating a market for a handful of shitty producers.

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant 2h2 hours ago

@andrewinereview @travelprose @rickwine @whitbywino well….I’ve some #BigBoy wine…and there is #ZERO in Niagara other than #icewine that

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant 2h2 hours ago

@andrewinereview @travelprose @rickwine @whitbywino that I’ve tried worth drinking a full glass of. Overpriced shit. Chile has better at 9

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant 2h2 hours ago

@andrewinereview @travelprose @rickwine @whitbywino would you consider #Malivore good? Cause it will take the rust off a bike chain.

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant 2h2 hours ago

@whitbywino @andrewinereview @travelprose @rickwine any day! I will bring the cali cabs…you being the #VQA #PaintRemover

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant 2h2 hours ago

@whitbywino @rickwine @andrewinereview @travelprose let’s hear them…I will give them a shot. On par with #Harlan #ScreamingEagle #Poetry

André Proulx@andrewinereview 2h2 hours ago

@lefthandedrant @whitbywino @rickwine @travelprose doubt you’ve ever been in the same room as a bottle of screaming eagle.

André Proulx@andrewinereview 2h2 hours ago

@lefthandedrant @whitbywino @rickwine @travelprose your ignorance is astounding.

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant 2h2 hours ago

@andrewinereview @whitbywino @rickwine @travelprose my ignorance….tell me anything Cab that can compete with a 2010 Dominus or anything

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant 2h2 hours ago

@andrewinereview @whitbywino @rickwine @travelprose from 2005 in California. Ontario….just doesn’t have it. It will go buy some..examples?

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant 2h2 hours ago

@andrewinereview @whitbywino @rickwine @travelprose Plump Jack? Torbreck? Penfolds? Rockford?

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant 2h2 hours ago

@andrewinereview @whitbywino @rickwine @travelprose I don’t buy junk. Hence I don’t buy #VQA

P.J. Taillon @lefthandedrant 2h2 hours ago

@andrewinereview @whitbywino @rickwine @travelprose lmfao. Check my Instagram for my wine! #NoMalivore #NoVQA

And on, and on (in fact, as I write this, they are still going at it over there on Twitter).

Alarming right? Just a little over the top?

I don’t know, I just don’t know. But, as I said, I don’t care anymore. There are lots of P.J.’s out there who all think exactly the same the way.

They are so steadfast in their resolve that they like a certain style of wine, and no matter what you show them, it won’t be good enough to replace the Screaming Eagle ($2,000 a bottle) and Harlan Estate ($600 US a bottle) that they covet so much and can obviously afford.

When they need a break from over-saturated, high-alcohol, unbalanced Napa cabs, they reach for $9 Chilean reds to fill the gap. So how does Ontario or Niagara compete with that?

You can’t find either of those being made in Ontario or Canada anywhere.

I know we can show P.J. some great wines in Niagara or Prince Edward County or the Okanagan Valley, but that’s on him to go find them, to look beyond the LCBO, on his own, when he’s ready to make the effort.

It reminds me of one of my favourite stories about Niagara wines.

It was quite a few summers ago now that I got a call on a Saturday about someone flying into Niagara who wanted to buy some “Canadian” wine for his cellar. I was told he was one of Canada’s richest men, a CEO of one of the country’s top companies, who had what has been described as one the largest, deepest and best wine cellars in the world. But not one bottle of Canadian wine was in it.

I agreed to show him what we had here in Niagara and gathered up all the wines I could find on short notice and had them sent to the Charles Inn in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

I sat on the back patio with this business tycoon (I won’t divulge his name) from Quebec and we started a long afternoon of tasting. He told me his cellar was all about First Growth Bordeaux, all the finest vintages and hundreds and hundreds of cases, plus Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, other top Burgundies, cult Napa Valley (but he wasn’t big on Cali wines), Gaja and only the best Italian wines, and on and on. He had a great cellar, no question about it.

What was missing was anything from his own country. Not one bottle of Canadian wine.

So, we tasted. First the whites, Riesling and Chardonnay. He had an amazing palate and quickly rejected the wines that didn’t pass muster with him. We moved into reds, the Pinots, the red blends and Cabernet Francs. He dismissed the Cabernet Francs solely based on the fact it was used primarily as a blender for Bordeaux wines.

After about 30 or 40 wines, he made his decision: Stratus Red 2007, Thirty Bench Triangle Vineyard Riesling 2008 and Le Clos Jordanne Claystone Terrace Chardonnay 2007. He had 40 cases in total sent directly to his jet and we were done.

Those Niagara bottles now rest beside the Mouton, the Petrus, the DRC, the Gaja, Jayer, Opus One, Grange and all the finest wines money can buy.

Not because he feels they have to be there, but because he wants them to.

And that’s how I feel about P.J.’s tirade on Twitter.

Like them, or hate them, sir, I just don’t give a shit.