Sent January 21, 2010
Only two replies have been received by January 26, 2010. The first was a polite acknowledgement from my local MPP, Jeff Leal, without further comment, and the second was from St. Pauls MPP Eric Hoskins, whose office manager replied, in part "In order for our office to provide you with the best quality service, we require your complete home address and phone number. This information is solely for our records and is requested of each constituent contacting our office in order to confirm that they are a resident of St. Paul's." Guess if you are a voter in that riding you get a response...
Hello
I am planning to write an article for www.littlefatwino.com which will be sent to probably 500 people directly and more indirectly.
The Classics Catalogue is the LCBO's top publication, the place where they sell their most expensive products. In calendar year 2009 the Classics Catalogue listed 485 imported wines, 1 from British Columbia and 1 from Ontario (and only 60 bottles of that).
The February 2010 edition of the Classics catalogue has just become available, and is online at
http://www.vintages.com/classics/cc_main.shtml
There are 185 imported wines, with an opening inventory of more than 43,500 bottles, yet not a single drop of this is from Ontario, or even Canada.
A historical listing of the support of Ontario wine that has been made available by Vintages Classics Catalogue and other publications are on my website, at http://www.littlefatwino.com/winemags.html
It should be noted that just before I sent this email I also checked the availability of wines on LCBO's internet Vintages ordering system, Vintages Online, and found that of 461 wines available only 7 were from Canada, with ALL of those from two large British Columbia producers. Once again LCBO is not making ANY Ontario wine available to the public through their most prestigious sales channels.
Do you have any comments that I can print in my article?
many thanks
Larry Paterson
Owner,