Cheese and wine yes, chocolate and wine, no

The export market for Canadian wine will remain a niche market at best, one of Canada’s best-known wine writers says.

But Tony Aspler believes there’s a huge opportunity to build that niche in the Chinese and Asian market through the demand for Canadian sweet wines.

Aspler was in North Bay Saturday as part of A Night on the French Riviera, the Capitol Centre’s seventh annual wine gala and fundraiser.

He gave a wine tasting seminar at the centre revolving around chocolate and cheese.

“Cheese, of course, is the best accompaniment for wine, and chocolate is the worst accompaniment for wine,” Aspler said.
“It’s a question of showing people how to match. Just because it’s cheese, it doesn’t mean all wines will go with it. There are different styles of cheese requiring different styles of wine. And with chocolate, I’ll be teaching what works and what doesn’t work, and what sort of wine should you choose to go with it.”

Ladybug infestation
Before conducting the tasting, Aspler sat down with baytoday.ca. to talk about the state of the Canadian wine industry.

Ontario, the largest wine producer in the country, suffered from a “terrible” winter, Aspler said, with the grape harvest down 50 per cent. As well a ladybug infestation had hit the Niagara growing area known as the bench.

“They’re going to great lengths to actually cleanse the grapes of these insects by washing them, using sorting tables to shake them off and things like that,” Aspler said.

The extra cost involved combined with the loss in production will invariably lead to higher prices, Aspler said.

Asia a hot market
As well Ontario producers will have to blend offshore grapes in with their own, so enough wine is available to at least maintain market share.

On the positive side, Asia has become a hot market for Canadian sweet wines such as icewine—Canada is the world leader in icewine production, Aspler says—late harvest, select late harvest, and special select late harvest.

“I think we’ll be very well poised to enter the far east market, particularly in China, which is an opening market because the consumers there like sweet wines,” Aspler said.

“I was in China a year ago last May and it was amazing how the Chinese consumer went for the icewines and late harvest wines because they're used to a sweet wine.”