For a lot of years, I, and thousands of others, traipsed through the basement of Place Bonaventure with a SAQ tasting glass in one hand and a map and index of the hundreds of wines and spirits available to be tasted in the other. In more recent years that map was replaced by a mobile app and I took copious notes on my phone as I swirled organic Alsatian Rieslings, Grand Cru Burgundy, high-end Barolo, luxury Cognac and more than my fair share of Champagne, then sipped and spit it professionally into a spitoon, so as not to be too tipsy and to remember the best of what I was tasting and recommend it to readers.
The end of October used to be the happiest time of the year in Montreal. In addition to La Grande Dégustation with its massive commercial wine producers, medium-size distributors and promotional groups, there was also RASPIPAV, the private wine import salon, and for the last two years there’s been RAW, the natural wine salon that hits only the world’s biggest natural wine-loving cities like London, New York and LA.
This year, there’s no RAW, because the whole concept is that the small-scale wine producers come themselves, which they can’t because of Covid. RASPIPAV became a condensed online marketplace where importers selected a handful of wines to sell through a private import website with home delivery of mixed cases or delivery to a local SAQ (more on that below!). La Grande Dégustation is doing something similar by selling its products online by the bottle for delivery or pick-up, but it’s also decided to go online in a different way, with low-cost online webinars with groups of producers by region or adjective (e.g. “modern” and “elegant”).
One upside of going digital is that the producers who’d usually be there will be in their own wine caves or fields, bringing you to the site of what they make. Participants can also book videoconference times or chat online with individual producers or their representatives. There’s no cost for this, I don’t think.
Signs of Things to Come at the SAQ for Private Import Wines
What could theoretically be the most exciting part of the event is the SAQ will be rolling out what could be a trial run of online sales for private import products on its website in the future. As part of La Grande Dégustation, more than 600 IP wines will be available for purchase through the Grande Dég website, so you can order these from your couch – by the bottles instead of the case. You can already order SAQ wines online this way and pick them up at stores, but not Private Import.
Just because a wine is private import, though, doesn’t mean it’s great, or even better than what’s at the SAQ, and you still can’t try it in advance (a lot of Montreal private import agents don’t attend the Grande Dégustation, so their products won’t be represented there), but there are some big name brands here if you’re into things like Duckhorn and Masi.
Webinar Evenings in France, Italy, Spain and More
There are also nine 90-minute webinar evenings featuring 60 private import products to taste. Tickets are $11.14 each for the webinars and you’ll be expected to buy the wines separately before Oct. 4 to have them delivered to your closest available SAQ that allows private import pickup. This date has already been pushed back a few days, so it’s not too late.
La Grande Dégustation de Montréal takes place online October 26 to 31 throughout Quebec, though I’m not sure what’s keeping out anyone from outside Quebec. If you’re really interested in “Chic Italian” wines or the “US West Coast,” theoretically you could get a ticket to those webinars, too.
The webinar descriptions are only available in French for now and can be found by scrolling down on this page.
Leave a Reply