The global wine industry has been facing an unexpected challenge recently — an oversupply of wine.
This situation is having a far-reaching impact, including on wineries in the Niagara Region.
Several winery owners there tell CHCH News they’ve had mixed results with their harvest this year.
For Carolyn Hurst, the president of Westcott Vineyards, it’s been a good harvest but the global pressures on the industry as a whole have had a real impact — such as the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war.
“The wine that used to go to Russia is now looking for a new home and all of that is impacting our ability to compete in our local market place.”
While the influx of wine supply globally is not ideal for wine producers, Hurst says extreme weathers like those that hit the region this past summer aren’t either.
“This year has had us bobbing and weaving and jumping and watching the weather everyday,” she said.
Another winery owner says things were looking good at the beginning of summer but not so much now.
“It started out as a very strong growing season,” Marzia Murdoch, co-owner of 180 Estate Winery said. “Everything does look great right now but we’re noticing though that the yield is much more smaller than we anticipated. We’re seeing about 20 per cent less yield.”
Murdoch says its not just the weather, or the oversupply that has been affecting her winery but also taxation.
“In Ontario, every bottle of wine is about 60 per cent taxed across all levels of government and other associations that we belong to so it makes it difficult to compete with international wines regardless of the amount of wines on the shelves the taxation issue is significant.
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