This discussion summarizes the compliance issues for a licensed BC winery (manufacturer) as they relate to minimum production standards imposed by the BC LCRB (licensing branch).
Title: Winery Production Requirements
Date: April 5, 2020
Author: Mark Hicken, BA JD
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Production Requirements
The LCRB’s requirements for winery production are as follows:
- The winery must produce at least 4500 litres of wine annually. There is a potential exemption from this requirement upon application (and with a valid reason such as crop failure).
- The winery must ferment at least this amount of wine at the licensed winery and also do at least one of certain other manufacturing steps for this amount of wine at the winery. The other steps are: blending, crushing, filtering, aging wine for at least 3 months, packaging, and (for sparkling wine) secondary fermentation or carbonation.
- The winery must own or lease the necessary winemaking equipment to enable it to meet these production requirements.
These production requirements are in effect for each year that the license is valid.
Please note that there are additional production requirements issued by the LDB that apply to land-based wineries (BC LDB Winery Categorization: Land-Based vs. Commercial) and separate requirements issued by the ALC for wineries that are located in the Agricultural Land Reserve (BC Agricultural Land Commission Rules for Wineries).