In vino veritas
"...snip... As the entries rolled in, the search for judges became a priority, then a panic. Originally, I had thought that finding sommeliers and SAQ wine experts would be easy, but the professionals had no interst in judging amateur wines. Rumours in winemaking circles has it that the SAQ did its best to shut down amateur winemking in Quebec to protect its tax-grabbing monopoly, with amateurs threatened with arrest. Nobody could confirm the story, but repression could be why Ontario has a thriving provincial amateur winemaker's association and Canada has a national winemaking association and competition, while Quebec has neither.
That's when an angel who calls himself the Little Fat Wino came to our rescue. Officially, Larry Patterson, a tireless promoter of amateur winemaking whose website littlefatwino.com is a clearinghouse for information from across Canada and around the world, is Ontario's representative with the Amateur Winemakers of Canada
Larry had heard about our competition from one of our contestants and e-mailed us to find out if we had judges. When he heard of our desperate search, he took it upon himself to put together a panel which included:
Paul Dunseath, a member of the Wine Judges of Ontario, editor of AWO News, the magazine of the Amateur Winemakers of Ontario, a frequent contributor to Winemaker Magazine and a former champion winemaker at the Amateur Winemakers of Canda competition;
Marcel Sarrazin, a certified member of the Wine Judges' Commission of Ontario and one of Ontario's most successful amateur winemakers, standing ninth in the AWO's history of competition. He's also a major force behind amateur winemaking in eastern Ontario;
Our other two judges hail from the 60-kilometre strectch of southern Quebec where Tourism Quebec has only just begun to promote the popular Route des vins. The Route wends its way through a vineyard-friendly microclimate that stretches from the Richelieu Valley to the foothills of the Sutton Range, home to almost all of this province's wine producers.
Gilles Benoit, one of our two Quebec panelists, owns and operates Vignoble des Pins in Sabrevois, south of Montreal. He gives his time to amateur winemaking because he believes that, thanks to new grape hybrids and fermentation techniques, Quebec has a winemaking future.
Robert LeRoyer owns and operates Vignoble LeRoyer in St. Pierre de Napierville. Like Gilles, he thinks it's high time that Quebec's amateur winemakers organized themselves. He points to the fact that barely one percent of the SAQ's shelves are given over to Quebec products even though Canada's other wine-producing provinces like Ontairo and British Columbia heavily promote their commercial winemaking operations.
These five men drove all the way to N.D.G from Peterborough, Napierville, Sabrevois and Ottawa in bad weather and refused compensation. Why? "Winemakers need encouragement," Larry told me. "Winemaking needs an audience."...snip..."
Amateur winemakers salute Suburban contest