N.S. wineries say new provincial program could be 'catastrophic' for local grape growers

A new provincial program supporting commercial wine producers would give millions of dollars to two bottling companies while crippling the local industry, according to several Nova Scotia wineries.

Representatives from a dozen farm wineries signed a letter from Wine Growers Nova Scotia to the province calling for the end of the commercial wine support program.

The initiative would provide between $6 million and $12 million a year to companies that bottle wine in the province but can purchase their grapes from outside of Nova Scotia and Canada, according to information shared with CBC News. 

"It could have a catastrophic effect," said Karl Coutinho, board chair of Wine Growers Nova Scotia and president of Avondale Sky Winery in Newport, N.S.

Coutinho and his colleagues are afraid local wineries wouldn't be able to keep up with commercial producers that can buy cheaper grapes abroad, produce more and charge less.

This new program would undermine decades of work building an industry that creates $250 million for the local economy every year and 1,100 jobs across rural Nova Scotia, he said.

Caught off guard

The province held a meeting with wine industry stakeholders on a Friday in January and announced the commercial wine support program would be starting the following Monday, according to several people at the meeting. 

"It took me a minute to kind of grasp what it meant," said Beatrice Stutz, CEO of Domaine de Grand Pré. "We were gobsmacked." 

The program would result in wines bottled in Nova Scotia using grapes from outside of the province getting the same preferred markups that local wines get at NSLC locations, Stuz said, and she doesn't think many local wineries would survive.

"The biggest issue for me, or for us as an association of farm wineries, is that the Nova Scotia tax payers' money will subsidize the foreign grape production by incentivizing the bottling of imported grape juice in Nova Scotia," she said. 

Coutinho said the production facilities are also able to market their product as being bottled in Nova Scotia and, again, undermine the local wineries. 

The local wineries lobbied the province to not go ahead with the program after the meeting, but Coutinho said they haven't received an update in months.

2 commercial producers

There are currently just two commercial wine bottling facilities operating in Nova Scotia.

One is run by Devonian Coast, which has three vineyards in the province. The other is owned by the Ontario-based Peller Estates.

"This program only benefits two players, but it undermines all the farm wineries and the over 100 grape growers that are in this province," Stutz said.

The purpose behind the new program is for Nova Scotia to meet international trade laws, said Finance Minister Allan MacMaster.

"They're negotiated between Canada and Australia and various other countries and what was in place before was not trade compliant. So we had to change that. We have to change that," he said in an interview.

MacMaster said the province has until June to comply with the trade laws and he'll continue to consult stakeholders.