72 LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
PHOTO:
SHUTTERSTOCK
WINE
PICTURE THIS: You're vacationing in Tuscany and as you drive
— lost in the hills somewhere between Florence and Siena — you
happen upon a hilltop village with red-tiled sandstone houses and
cedar trees. You come across a small cantina whose sign reads, De-
gustazione di vini.
You've picked up enough Italian to know that you can taste
wine here. You enter the cellar and the proprietress pours you a
glass of her Chianti Classico Riserva. You love the wine. You want
to buy some on the spot to carry back in your suitcase.
No, better still: you want to order cases and introduce it to your
friends. Maybe even start a little hobby business, importing this
delicious wine you've discovered for colleagues, friends and family.
How do you go about it? Well, my advice would be to take a sem-
inar conducted by Charles Steven Trenholme, entitled "Importing
Wine, Cra Beer and Spirits for Pleasure & Profit." Trenholme has
been importing wine into Ontario for almost 40 years and has pre-
sented this seminar twice a year since 1992.
I posited the above scenario to him and asked how our vaca-
tioning lawyer would go about importing the wine for home con-
sumption or even starting an importing business based on the wine
discovery. (We're using the Liquor Control Board of Ontario here
as the model.)
"If the goal is to bring it back for friends, the easiest route would
be to place a Private Import Order," says Trenholme. "As a private
individual you are allowed a maximum of five cases of any wine [to
import]. All you need is the winery's contact information. e Li-
quor Board's Specialty Services Department would get the pricing
from the winery, determine whether the winery is prepared to ship
and instruct them on the technical and logistical details.
"You would have to put down a 25-per-cent deposit of the calcu-
lated landed value of the wines," Trenholme says.
"e Board would place the order and, when the wines arrived,
they would be subjected to a lab analysis. e supplier is charged
$200 for the lab analysis and this amount is deducted from the sup-
| DETOURS |
Importing for Pleasure and Profit
A primer on the ins and outs of selling that wonderful Chianti you discovered in Tuscany after you return home
