and find a new livelihood. The province also established a new license category designed to allow growers to diversify income by selling wine. Growers required only two acres of grape production instead of the previous 20 acres as a licensing condition. This was soon followed by new provincial legislation that created production standards for the wine industry. Part of the wine industry support
authorized by Agriculture Canada was that I sat on industry committees and performed various extension activities. The Canadian wine industry was locked in a battle with the European industry over the use of European names, especially Champagne for sparkling wines. The Champagne fight had been going on for over 30 years, but Burgundy, Chablis, and a host of regions were also festering. By the early eighties it became obvious that we would eventually have to establish production standards with label definitions similar to Europe and the United States. GeorgeHostetter who was chair of
the CanadianWine Institute (now Canadian Vintners Association) technical committee furnishedme with CWI committeematerial to date and aftermanymeetings of an industry committee I drafted a set of made-in-BC standards which evolved into the BCWine Act of 1991. As part of our wine evaluation
project we held an annual blind tasting for winemakers at the Research Station. It was a two-day affair in which the best of our research wines were presented for critical evaluation . . . the operative word here is critical. This structure eventually evolved into the judging format for the OkanaganWine Festival and later into the assessment format for the VQA judging panel. The bottomline of how the BC wine
industry went through the transition fromhybrids with unusual flavors to ourmodern industry is that a great many peoplemade quiet contributions in small increments. When cataclysmic events forced a change, the preformed committees were able to step forward and give a solution that had already been quietly worked out. It only required incentive for acceptance. —Gary Strachan’s profile is posted on
LinkedIn. 30
British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Spring 2014
LETTER Be wary of Hydro’s exemption offer
To the editor: Growersmay have heard about B.C.Hydro’s ‘Exempt Residential Service
Rate for Farms’ and be tempted to opt in.However, growers should be careful before switching—itmay not be a bargain for smaller farms. If you are not on the farmrate, you are paying 6.9 cents/kwh for the first
~1350 kwh and 10.34 cents/kwh thereafter. The farmrate is 8.27 cents/kwh. (In addition to GST there are some fixed charges (~15 cents/day for residential and ~16 cents/day for farm).) The graph (based on a
60-day billing period) shows that if you use less than ~2,200 kwh, you are better off at the residential rate. For any usage over 2,200 kwh the farmrate will save youmoney. For example, if you only use 1300 or 1400 kwh, the farmrate will cost you 16%more than the residential rate. If you use 4,000kwh, you will save ~7%by switching to the farmrate. There are rumors of a 15 percent rate hike. If all the ratesmentioned above
are increased by 15 percent, the 2200kwh break-even point will remain the same. Note: this rate does not apply for”commercial” operations on the farm.
Googling ‘BCHydro Residential FarmUse - 1151F FarmRate and PST’ brings up a BC Agriculture Council page that givesmore information. Fortis has a similar service. Their rates are being updated right now.
John Schmidt, Lake Country
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