A story in the St. Catherines Standard by wine industry reporter, Monique Beech, indicates that Ontario will join British Columbia in removing the \”Cellared in Canada\” (CIC) designation from marketing in retail stores and from the labels of wine bottles. The BC LDB has already changed is signage in retail stores to remove the CIC description and replaced it with the more accurate \”Bottled in British Columbia from International and Domestic Wine\”. Consumer surveys had found that the old CIC labelling was misleading to consumers, many of whom thought they were purchasing 100% Canadian wine when they bought this product.
Update (Jan 27, 2010): This story has now also been covered by Wine Spectator: Canadian Wine May Soon Be More Canadian. An interesting point brought up in this article was that the CEO of Andrew Peller admitted that 60% of his company\’s revenue comes from CIC wines. Considering that CIC wines are the least expensive segment, that would mean that by volume, probably 70% or more of sales are CIC.