In just over three months, chances are you’ll be able to walk into your local grocery store and come out with a bottle of your favorite B.C. wine. The provincial government has announced it will be issuing new licenses that will allow eligible grocery stores to sell B.C. made wine.
“It is a good thing. I would say it is long overdue,’ says Leo Gebert, President of St. Hubertus Winery in Kelowna.
B.C. wine sales in grocery stores will start April 1, 2015. Gebert says the news will have a positive impact on a lot more than just wineries.
“It’s a great announcement and I think it will reall helps sales of B.C. products and when you have 100 per cent B.C. wines, it will help the land base, farms can keep on working,” says Gebert.
However, the news isn’t great for everyone. Tracy Gray owns Discover Wines, a small VQA wine store in the same shopping plaza that houses a Save-on-Foods store. One of her biggest concerns is that eligible grocery stores will be able to sell wine even if they’re less than a kilometer away from the nearest wine outlet.
“I just hope that our regular customers and all the people who got to know us will continue to support us but it is very concerning,” says Gray. “I think if there were some distance parameters put in place to protect some of the small businesses that are there already, that would make it more fair.”
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She’s also upset that her license only allows her to sell VQA wine only and not other B.C. made wine, giving an already big grocery store company even a bigger advantage.
“Potentially they will be able to have a much wider selection than what we are able to carry which I have a big issue with,” says Gray.
Meanwhile at St. Hubertus winery, Gebert is pleased with the potential impact of the latest announcement, but he admit there are still a lot more questions than answers including whose local wine will end up on store shelves and who will make those decisons.
“Maybe we will have to fight for shelf space because with grocery stores in general if you want to have your products in there especially big stores you actually pay for shelf space,” says Gebert.
The Government has not yet announced how many new licenses it will issue to sell B.C. made wine. The announcement is the second-phase of the government’s move to allow liquor sales in grocery stores which are larger than 10,000 square feet and sell a minimum of 75 per cent food products and services.
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