INTRODUCTION This is the first wine guide written specifically for Canadians, no matter where in Canada they live. Unlike wine guides that focus on the wines available in one of Canada's provinces, this is a guide to quality and good-to-great-value wines that are widely available across the country. It includes wines of three colours—red, rosé, and white—and all styles, including still and sparkling wines, wines that are dry, off-dry, and sweet, and fortified wines such as sherry and port. If you drink wine, you'll find many wines here that suit your palate and are perfect for the occasion you're buying wine for.
I've been tasting thousands of wines each year for decades. There are great wines, excellent wines, very good and good wines, and also wines that are mediocre and poor—not to mention some that should never be on any market at any price. While preparing this guide, I tasted many more wines than I included, and I selected those that I believe offer quality and value for the price.
Speaking of price: the cost of a bottle of wine is not necessarily a good guide to its quality. There are some really excellent wines under $12 and some not-so-good wines that cost a lot more than that. I haven't discriminated by price, and you'll find many wines here that are really inexpensive and good quality, as well as many in the higher price brackets.
Nor have I discriminated by producer. There's a tendency in the wine world to look down on wines made for the mass market—wines made in the hundreds of thousands or millions of bottles—as if they couldn't possibly be as good as wine produced by winemakers making a few thousand cases of wine a year. But many of the big producers—whether they're in France, Italy, California, Argentina, Chile, or elsewhere—make excellent wines year after year. In this guide you find wines from these producers alongside wines made by mid-sized and small producers.
I'm happy to have feedback on the wines in this guide and suggestions of wines I should think of for the next edition. You can e-mail me at rodphillips@worldsofwine.com
Cheers!
Rod Phillips
