BCBusiness

14 BCBUSINESS MARCH 2016 But by year's end, the already frosty détente had shattered. Terroir B.C.—highly suspicious of almost any policy promoted by the BCWI—came out swinging against a BCWI-promoted plan to sell wine in grocery stores. While the group has long complained about a lack of new listings in government-run liquor stores, they also don't trust the BCWI to look out for their interests. "The BCWI, without really sitting down and talking to its members, believe the grocery store is the greatest thing they've ever seen," says Terroir B.C. co-chair Kim Pullen, the proprietor of Church & State Wines. "Today it may well be, but in the long term it could be disastrous," he adds, point- ing to Australia and California as examples of large-winery shelf domination. The BCWI, for its part, isn't buying that argument. "B.C. wine in grocery stores is supported overwhelmingly by small B.C. wineries, and they are very well represented on the shelves of the four stores that have opened so far," counters the normally soft- spoken Ezra Cipes, a BCWI board member and CEO of Summerhill Pyramid Winery. "[Pullen] is con- stantly trying to undermine the BCWI. He makes a lot of noise and pops up in the media quite often, but if you follow his arguments, it's almost nonsensical. His tar- gets are constantly moving." According to Christine Coletta, co-owner of Summerland's Okanagan Crush Pad winery, B.C. wineries will never conquer the world until they can stop fighting among themselves. As founding executive director of the BCWI, a position she held from 1990 to 1999, Coletta was instrumental in establishing the VQA program and increasing the market share for B.C. wine in this province. After 14 years of consulting on global and domestic wine brands, she agrees "100 per cent" with Terroir B.C. that the BCWI needs updating. But she doesn't agree with their H ow many of you are hungry?" asks Gus Fernandez, our self-described "real estate expert, mentor and coach," as the door closes on his lunchtime seminar Fortunes in Flipping. His hair slicked back and wearing a white dress shirt and gold-lamé tie, the 60-some- thing Fernandez stands at the front of the room while lunch is served and scrawls on two white easel pads: on the first he writes " SYSTEM"; on the second, "WEALTH." Learn the first, he tells us, and you'll attain the other. The mid-week workshop, held one December afternoon at Vancouver's Sheraton Wall Centre, attracts a crowd of more than 60 people eager to learn the art of house flipping. It's one of several similar workshops to have come through the Lower Mainland in the past year—from Pete and Dave of A&E's Flipping Boston to Tarek and Christina El Moussa of HGTV's Flip or Flop. In a town obsessed with real estate, flipping should be a logical local obsession yet according to many experts, the conditions for flip- ping here are worse than ever. "The value is all in the land," says Rick Clarke, a realtor who has had clients flipping prop- erties in Vancouver for years. "Even with a brand new house, the structure is worth multiples less than the plot." It's a fact most real estate investors are well aware of: a poll conducted in 2013 by Canadian Real Estate tactics. "I've lived through seven or eight hostile takeover attempts in the last 25 years. It's tedious. We need to work together as one collective otherwise we won't be effective." Terroir B.C.—which emerged in mid-2014 and is said to have anywhere from 70 to 90 signed members—grew out of frustration with the BCWI's perceived resis- tance to change. According to Pullen and his co-chair, John Skin- ner, owner of Painted Rock Win- ery, the small guys (many of them savvy retired businessmen) were tired of being ignored on a variety of issues, from shelving to the BCWI's focus on promoting local wine tourism over global strategiz- ing to the composition of the BCWI board. But most importantly, they objected to the lack of action on international Canadian blends: cheap bulk wines made from for- eign grapes, primarily produced by the Big Three, that confuse domestic consumers and give B.C. a bad name internationally. "The BCWI should be an advo- cate for B.C. wine, not interna- tional blends," says Skinner. "At the end of the day, there are too many conflicts of interest—the big guys control too much of it. We do owe it to the government to speak with one voice. But if [Terroir B.C.] didn't exist, many of these issues would not be addressed." Despite its rocky start, Skinner remains hopeful about the UBC-Kedge project, which will address gover- nance after it tackles labelling. "I hope we can get the [big winer- ies] to the table. That would cool everyone's jets for a little bit." Cipes, in turn, says Terroir B.C.'s "moving targets" are all being addressed with due process through various channels, includ- ing the UBC-Kedge task force on labelling. "They are correct in saying we are not a nimble orga- nization. We do not shoot from the hip. But the flip side of that is that we are conscientious and always hit the bull's eye when we do shoot." • GLASS ²/ ³ FULL Flipping Crazy Recently, there's been a boom in house-flipping seminars coming through Vancouver. As it turns out the city isn't a good market to flip in by Jacob Parry R e a l E s t a t e The B.C. Wine Institute was originally cre- ated by an act of the provincial legislature in 1990–when there were only 17 grape wineries in the province. Today the BCWI counts " 152 3 large wineries (those selling more than 700,000 litres of B.C. wine in B.C. annually) 23 medium wineries (selling 60,000- 700,000 litres) 126 small wineries (selling less than 60,000 litres) BCWI accounts for 2/3 of B.C.'s 248 wineries yet accounts for almost of total grape wines sales in the province. 95% 60,000 litres 700,000 litres wineries as members

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