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Canadian Wine Industry Essay

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The Canadian Wine industry is a relatively small player on the worldwide market with a wine export value of approximately $54 million in 2013, making up just 0.15% of global wine exports. This is largely due to Canadian grape grower’s inability to compete with producers in countries with more favourable weather conditions for growing grapes. For example, in 2007 Canada used approximately 8,000 hectares of land to grow grapes compared to the EU’s 3.5 million hectares, 2.5 million of which were in France alone. Despite Canada’s land size, there are only a few regions where the climate allows for a long enough growing season for grapes to mature on the vine.
Wine production in Canada is concentrated in Ontario and British Columbia, as well as …show more content…

Economies of scale are critical for low-priced wine production, but not essential for premium-priced wine production,making the premium wine product segmentation a well-suited niche for Canada’s wine industry. Ice Wine is produced from grapes that were left to freeze on the vine so Canada’s climate is an ideal environment for wine producers to capture the Ice Wine market. Given Canada’s susceptibility to bad weather, favourable conditions for Ice Wine grape production, and high cost/low production winery economic model, it is no wonder that the wine industry in Canada has grown steadily around the Ice Wine high-end product segmentation international niche market. Canadian wine exports totaled 42 million litres in 2013, valued at $54 million; of which 2.2 million litres was premium wine, valued at $36.3 million. Despite an apparent steady growth, the industry is heavily influenced by weather and Canada’s growing season so revenue decline can be seen in years where vineyards in Canada produced bad harvests due to weather restrictions. For example, in 2003-2005 Canada experienced severe cold weather conditions, particularly in Ontario, and grape availability was drastically reduced as a result. This had a significant impact on the wine industry in Canada as a whole as well as the export

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