Robert Bell's

Wines of Canada

Since 1992

 

Schloss Laderheim

Schloss Laderheim was created in 1977 by Calona Wines (owned today by Peller). It was one of numerous foreign-sounding labels. Canadian wine at the time was losing market share to imported wine, so the Canadian wineries passed off their generally mediocre wines with European-sounding labels. Misleading consumers actually worked. Schloss came in a brown hock bottle with Germanic script all over the label. In 1981 Schloss outsold Baby Duck -- 589,000 cases to 571,000 cases -- to become the top selling domestic wine in Canada.

The overwhelming success of Schloss inspired other domestic producers to create a riot of pseudo-label wines, including Hochtaler, Alpenweiss, Toscana and Tollerkranz. The German wine industry was not impressed. Hermann Guntrum of the great Nierstein house of the same name, remonstrated with Rafe Mair, the minister of Consumer Affairs in B.C., that the Schloss label had "too many German words for a clearly named Canadian product." Rafe’s deputy minister said that was beside the point: the label misrepresented neither the country of origin nor the manufacturer. “The Calona label to which you refer is not misleading," he wrote to Guntrum in May 1978. That was a dishonest answer, but the provincial government - then as it does today – was dedicated to protecting the wine industry.

Rafe and his deputy did bring in the cottage winery legislation in 1978. The number of wineries in BC doubled to 12. Gray Monk, Sumac Ridge and Gehringer Brothers were the three best cottage wineries and still are in business today.

Andrew Peller Ltd still produces Schloss Laderheim today you can find it in various sizes and in a box.

also see   Baby Duck       Hocktaler

Among the Vines

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