What to do about Vincor's Wine Rack stores

Michael "Grape Guy" Pinkus has some thoughts on what should be done about Vincor's chain of own-label wine stores, now that the company is foreign-owned:

Since Vincor was sold, April 3rd 2006, there has been no consideration or mention of what to do with those Wine Rack stores (you know the little kiosks you find in grocery stores, malls and on street corners that sell Vincor wines exclusively — and one of the few "competitors" to the LCBO’s centralized liquor dominance). The moment Vincor was sold there should have been, and should have continued to be, an uproar about these stores — not stopping until the problem was fixed. Originally the special license to open up additional locations was given to Vincor to promote and sell Ontario wine, but now — not so much. Although Jackson-Triggs, Inniskillin etc. remain Canadian wineries, their profits go south of the border. Have you been in one of these stores (and I don't even have o say lately, because this has always been the case)? Not all the wines on the shelves are VQA, it's that "cellared in Ontario" crap that makes us the laughing stock of the wine world [. . .] Those stores should have been seized from Vincor soon after the sale was made to Constellation and they should have been turned into VQA Wine Stores promoting 100% Ontario wine. Currently, according to the Wine Rack's website, there are 164 in the province of Ontario. If we were to divide those up evenly and geographically among the wineries of Ontario (for argument's sake let's say those that belong to the wine council — 73 in 2007), each winery would have their wines in an additional 2.24 stores. Now say we allow these wineries to have joint control over these locations — buddy-up so to speak with four other wineries (5 in total), these five would have their wines in 11 locations across the province . . . Imagine how many more hands good quality VQA wine would find itself into. These stores would not be allowed to sell "cellared-in-Ontario" wines — only 100% VQA-Ontario product. These stores would serve to educate the public as to what VQA actually is and stands for, because confusion still exists, especially with all those reports about short-crops and lowered percentages. Think about it, the exposure would be amazing and the profits would remain in the hands of our own Ontario-based wineries. Of course the government would get their share, we'd need some kind of governing body over these stores, this is Ontario after all — but let's leave the LCBO out of this one, and create an independent body not beholden to the current monopoly.

Interesting idea, although I'm not normally friendly to proposals to force private companies to disgorge assets at the behest of regulators. In this case, as the stores only exist due to a special dispensation from the regulators, that may not apply with the same force.