




On April 1st, 2025 the UCP (Alberta government) added an ad valorem tax to the existing flat tax on wine. You can read more about this tax here, but in essence 94.3% of wine in the province has gone up in price, and 64.7% has been affected by the highest tax tier of 15%. Combined with our weak Canadian dollar and record high shipping costs, this additional tax is having disastrous effects on Alberta’s wine & hospitality industry.
After 28 years of business, we feel very privileged that we’ve been able to pay our bills all this time by selling wines that we love and believe in. We've never had to succumb to the financially attractive urge to offer prosaic wine or fill orders for the flavours of the week. Metrovino remains a retail embodiment of the unyielding love of wine, the yearning for the beautifully disparate places from whence it comes and the emphatic support of the indefatigable individuals who bring it to fruition. Most of our products aren't available anywhere else in the province, and many are exclusive to us in Canada.
Receive news about our wine classes & events, features and information on new arrivals & exclusive product.
As Earth continues its aloof encircling of the sun, it's increasingly difficult for the human passengers to keep up with the pace of life. The faultlessly frail are rendered physically or mentally broken by the world, and even the robust and boisterous amongst us—including those who suspiciously exhibit no confusion in regard to the stark irrationality of existence—seem to have to fight to find their place. Perhaps none of us really have a place anymore.
It was a sunny June afternoon in 2011, and I was pulling into Weingut Wagner-Stempel’s resplendent courtyard for the first time. My future friend, Oliver Müller, was busy pouring wine samples to a number of guests who enjoyed their sips under the merciful shade of a 300-year-old chestnut tree. I introduced myself and I’ll never forget the bewildered expression on Oliver’s face when I told him that I had come from Canada in search of Riesling.
2024 is decidedly not an average vintage, and it contains a multiplicity of stories. I would surmise that if somebody visited 150 different estates this year, they'd hear 150 distinct reports.
It's a reality of life. Assuming a lack of independent wealth, and unless one is willing to forfeit virtually all of the conventions of modern existence in the Western world, one must seek gainful employment. Since none of my innumerable passions doubled as opportunities to earn even the most basic living, this depressing fact daunted me for many years. It wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties that the disillusionment gave way to a glimmer of hope when a burgeoning interest of mine seemed to coincide with an accessible “industry”.
On February 28th, Alberta-based liquor licensees received a bulletin from Alberta Gaming Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) informing us that as of April 1st, additional taxes will be applied to what they bizarrely refer to as “high end wine”. There was no prior consultation with importers, retailers and restaurateurs, nor did the bulletin announce why the egregious increases in taxes were being implemented.
It seems that I'm the first human to stir. Disoriented by jetlag and fuelled by excitement, I give up on sleep long before the day dawns. After the final nocturnal trains, there's a depth of silence when one can hear the vines exhaling as they, too, enjoy the stillness. Before long, gleeful birdsong begins to pierce the expiring darkness. I tie my shoes and leave the hotel by the side door.
It took me a long time to realise it… And once I realised it, it took me a long time to care because I knew that despite having the truth on our side, the subsequent battle wouldn’t be an easy one. But eventually, following repeated exposure, I had to acknowledge an incontestable fact which I'm now going to share with you.
It's occurred to me that I've written somewhat extensively about three of my grandparents, but very little about my paternal grandmother. One of my very earliest memories involves her so that's a good place to start.
It was late at night and I was almost home, riding my bicycle through the quiet streets of an adjacent neighbourhood. I entered the dead end of a cul-de-sac through a pedestrian path, pedalling along a short street that remained at stark odds with the relative gentrification around it. Its run-down apartment buildings and houses did little to belie the disproportionate occupancy by miscreants, drunks, hard drug users and general down-and-outers.
On April 1st, 2025 the UCP (Alberta government) added an ad valorem tax to the existing flat tax on wine. You can read more about this tax here, but in essence 94.3% of wine in the province has gone up in price, and 64.7% has been affected by the highest tax tier of 15%. Combined with our weak Canadian dollar and record high shipping costs, this additional tax is having disastrous effects on Alberta’s wine & hospitality industry.