Some good news for local wine and cider producers on Friday.
MPP Todd Smith and Minister of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs Ernie Hardeman were at Three Dog Winery in Sophiasburgh, where they announced a $15 million program to support wine and cider producers, Ontario-wide.
The funding will go towards a program to help wineries increase competitiveness and innovation, another to specifically help small cideries and distilleries to grow and scale-up their operations, and to increase tourism and export development within the industry.
The details of those programs include:
- The Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) Wine Support Program to help Ontario wineries increase competitiveness and innovation. The program supports wineries investing in growing their VQA wine business, including tourism development activities.
- The Small Cidery and Small Distillery Support Program to help eligible businesses grow and scale up their operations.
- Marketing, tourism and export development; performance measurement and research and development initiatives.
The province is also planning a couple of initiatives to help wineries, breweries and cider producers cut the red tape and market their products better.
Those initiatives include:
- Giving wineries, cideries, breweries and distilleries with a “By the Glass” licence the flexibility to extend their service hours from 9 a.m. to 12 a.m. seven days a week.
- Allowing authorized wineries to sell their wine at farmers’ markets and return unsold products to their on-site retail store within a 72-hour period. The previous 24-hour period forced wineries to bring products back and forth over the course of the weekend, which made retailing at farmers’ markets not economically viable.
The government says the wine and grape sector contributes $515 million to Ontario’s GDP and supports more than 9,000 direct jobs.
