International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration Keynote Address 2026

By Soif wine bar owner, and Air Canada wine curator Véronique Rivest

In this keynote, sommelier, Soif wine bar owner, and Air Canada wine curator Véronique Rivest reframes what might have been a straightforward talk on Canadian Chardonnay into a broader argument about connection. She opens by naming the rigid liquor laws that constrain Canada’s restaurant and wine industries, then pivots to the deeper theme of her talk: that wine has always been about people, not just product. She argues that Canadian Chardonnay has matured past the need to prove itself against Old World benchmarks and has found its own voice, one shaped by the country’s cool climate and remarkably diverse regions. The bulk of her speech is a call to dismantle wine’s culture of intimidation and snobbery in favor of genuine hospitality, meeting consumers — especially younger, values-driven drinkers — where they are rather than correcting them. She closes by urging the industry to focus not on making better wine, since Canada already does, but on telling more honest, authentic stories that connect each bottle to the place and people behind it. – John Szabo MS

It’s a great, great pleasure to be here — thank you so much for having me. I almost completely rewrote this speech, because every time you spend time around people in the wine industry, the conversation almost always circles back to the very rigid liquor laws that exist in our country and in every province, laws that are a real obstacle to growing our businesses and our industries. Quebec is today the only place in the world where restaurants do not have wholesale pricing. And I’d say Canada as a whole is one of the most difficult places to operate a restaurant — even though we have such a great reputation for our gastronomy that we attract people from all over the world to eat in our restaurants. And yet we do it all within an extremely rigid, often irrelevant, set of rules that doesn’t allow us to develop. But I thought starting the morning by getting angry probably wasn’t a great idea, so I stuck to my original plan. If anyone wants to talk about it, I’m here all day — come find me. There’s lots to say.

So kudos to everybody here evolving in this beautiful, wonderful industry that should be all about pleasure and coming together — because a lot of us are carrying these businesses on our shoulders while working within such a rigid structure.

I’ve spent my career watching people choose wine — as a sommelier, a restaurant owner, a wine writer, an educator, and the curator of the wine list for Air Canada. Those are all very different jobs, but they all start with exactly the same question: what should I drink? And that’s a much bigger question than it seems. People aren’t just asking which beverage to choose — they’re asking, can I trust you? Will I enjoy this? And if I order it, will I look stupid? That last question has hurt our industry far more than we might want to admit.

I was invited today to talk about Chardonnay, but I think today is going to be about more than just Chardonnay — it’s going to be about connection. Connection to place, connection to people. Wine is never just about wine. I’m not going to spend twenty minutes talking to you about malolactic fermentation, oak regimes, or blending, and I’m especially not going to tell you how Chardonnay should taste. Instead, I want to talk about people — the people you want to sell wine to. Because the future of Canadian wine depends on you connecting with them.

Like many of you, I feel the challenges our industry is facing. I’ve operated Soif for twelve years now, and most of those years have been okay or good — it’s hard to do great in restaurants. But the last year has been close to horrendous. We’re operating in a new landscape; a lot of things are changing, consumer habits and so on. The COVID years were almost easier to navigate than what we’re facing today. But despite the challenges, I never wanted to leave this profession — not because I don’t know how to do anything else, but because I truly love and believe in what we do.

Something really important happened during COVID: the local, buy-local movement gained huge momentum, and it’s getting even stronger now with all the craziness happening in the world, especially south of here. We developed a strong sense of pride and a desire to increase our food autonomy. But just as important, it reminded us that we need to gather. We missed sharing meals, opening bottles with friends. We missed sitting around a table with no agenda other than being together. Hospitality isn’t just an industry — it’s part of being human.

Restaurants, wineries, and tasting rooms aren’t just places where transactions happen — they’re places where memories are created, where conversations begin, where relationships grow. And that’s exactly why I’m optimistic. Because while the way people buy wine is changing, the desire to connect hasn’t disappeared, and never will. If anything, it’s stronger than ever. And wine is the best lubricant for those connections.

For years, Canadian wine was trying to prove something — that we could make world-class Chardonnay. Today, that’s not the conversation anymore. We’ve stopped emulating others. We’re not asking if we can make Chardonnay like Burgundy or Sonoma; we’re asking a much better question: what does Canadian Chardonnay sound like when it’s not trying to imitate anything else? And yes, I did say sound like — a little nod to Andrew Jefford’s keynote and his beautiful analogy between wine and music. We’ve embraced our own voice across the entire country, and that’s really exciting. When international writers visit Canada, they’re no longer politely surprised that the wine is good — they’re genuinely interested in finding out why, what the differences are, what makes it unique.

Canadian Chardonnay is showing up on wine lists in great restaurants in New York, Paris, and London — not because it’s Canadian, but because it deserves to be there, because it has developed its own voice. Where does Canada fit into the cool-climate global conversation? That, too, I think, is the wrong question. We already belong in that conversation. The more interesting question is: what is it that we’re the only ones bringing to the table?

As demand increases for cool-climate wines — generally lower alcohol, higher acidity — we have an enormous advantage. When people think cool climate, they think of Canada. Of course, California and Australia have cool-climate regions, but globally they’re not perceived as cool places. Canada is. Even if Julia Harding questioned how cool we really are — Julia, who also gave a keynote here and works with Jancis Robinson, I’ll have to invite her back to Canada and take her to the Quebec vineyards in February — that perception of cool aligns beautifully with what consumers are increasingly looking for: freshness, balance, elegance, energy.

But we also have to be careful about how we define cool climate. Is it just lower alcohol and higher acidity? I don’t think so. I’ve had hybrid reds from Quebec that hit close to 14.5% alcohol with searing acidity, and Syrahs from the southern Okanagan with the aromatics of a cool vintage in the northern Rhône, yet super ripe. Once again, we shouldn’t emulate what’s done everywhere else — our balance is different because our conditions and our elements are different. Perhaps climate is as much about character as it is about weather. Perhaps it’s about the way a wine carries freshness, carries tension.

And of course, there’s not just one expression of Canadian Chardonnay. Our wine regions are thousands of kilometers apart — different climates, different soils, different traditions, almost all of them shaped in one way or another by water. Yes, even the vineyards in Quebec that seem a bit further from water were carved by water millions of years ago. That diversity is one of our greatest strengths, and we’ll experience it later today — not one Canadian Chardonnay, but many Canadian Chardonnays.

We’ve all heard the story of a customer in a restaurant who says, ‘Oh, I’m tired of Chardonnay — please bring me a Chablis.’ We’ve moved away from that whole Anything-But-Chardonnay movement, although it was seriously needed at the time. I don’t think there was ever a movement better named than In Pursuit of Balance.

People are drinking Chardonnay — it’s still in demand, maybe less so in the heavily oaked style of before, although some people still love that too. But they’ve finally understood that Chardonnay is Chardonnay, and it’s still a great entry point into the world of wine, because it’s one of the most recognized and easy-to-pronounce great names in the world. Americans really do massacre the pronunciation of some others — I’m sorry, but they’re just too long, I can’t.

Consumers, though, are rejecting stereotypes. They’re ordering less by grape variety and becoming more interested in place. They talk about texture, about freshness, even emotions and feelings when they order wine. They’re describing an experience rather than asking for a grape. And Chardonnay happens to be the world’s greatest translator of place, if we let it speak.

Consumers in Quebec are very open and curious, and I’d say most Canadians are too. My experience with Air Canada reinforced that impression. To my surprise — I was expecting more conservatism — but when you have to choose five wines for millions of passengers with completely different tastes and levels of knowledge, and you can’t rely on someone standing beside them explaining every detail, it would be easy to select only well-known wines, classic and familiar appellations. But that would be boring, and that’s not me — not the boring part, I mean sticking to the classics all the time. Wine is also about discovery. So I tried to balance classic with discovery, familiar regions with emerging ones, always trying to choose wines that express where they come from.

And at those price points, it’s not always easy. But passengers have happily come on board, and a lot of them have tried, for the first time, Pinot Noir from Germany, Grüner Veltliner from Austria, Xinomavro from Greece. Consumers are far more adventurous than we sometimes give them credit for.

Which brings me to what I think is a great opportunity for us. It isn’t making better wine — of course we can always get better, but we’re already making outstanding wines. Our great opportunity is telling better stories — telling our story in a way that connects with people. During COVID, people were clamoring for wine; now we have to work hard to make them choose it. And for too long, we’ve wrapped it in language and attitude that was far more intimidating than inviting.

We’ve all met the stereotype — someone who makes you feel like a loser because you ordered a Titanic red to go with your fish. Can we just start by letting people drink what they want to drink? The snobbery and the penguin suit have pretty much faded away, at least we’d like to think — but if we’re just replacing one form of arrogance with another, it’s not helping much. A hipster sommelier who tells you that if you don’t like the wine, it’s because you don’t understand it, while he’s serving you a faulty — excuse me, a ‘funky’ — wine? That’s not very inclusive. We’re still acting a bit like a sect, with our special codes and vocabulary. It doesn’t feel very welcoming.

Analytical tasting is a great tool for all of us, but it’s intimidating for consumers. And really, how useful is a grocery list to describe a wine? We’re seeing tasting evolve, with much more focus on things like texture and emotion. The Wine Scholar Guild has completely revised its tasting curriculum to include things like geosensory tasting, which places far more emphasis on mouthfeel and texture than on aroma.

And since learning about wine should be hands-on and practical anyway — you cannot teach someone what something smells like, they have to experience it — we should stop telling consumers what wine smells and tastes like. We should help them find their own voice instead of imposing our vocabulary. Get out of your head and into your consumer’s head.

One of the best moments for me is when I see a person realize their own perception is completely valid. We’ve intimidated people so much that they’re afraid to ask questions. When someone very shyly says something like, ‘I’m smelling something that reminds me of my grandmother’s perfume,’ rather than correcting them or steering them somewhere else, we should just say, ‘Tell me more.’ You’ll see them light up, start expressing themselves more freely. It’s the best feeling — and it’s good business. You’ve just made that person feel good about themselves, and they’ll come back, they’ll buy more wine, they’ll bring friends. That’s hospitality. That’s connection.

Hospitality is not making people feel judged — it’s making them feel welcome. At Soif, if somebody asks for ice in their wine, we bring it, with a smile. Rolling your eyes at anything is completely forbidden. What are we trying to do, protect the wine from the customer? We’re supposed to be there to help them enjoy the wine, not erect barriers between them and it.

That applies just as much to wineries and how you sell your wine. Consumers don’t need another polished marketing campaign. A lot of people today are panicking, or at least seriously questioning themselves, because of falling wine sales. I don’t think consumers are rejecting wine so much as they’re rejecting the nonsense — generic brands, wine treated as just another consumer product rather than an agricultural one, fake stories, marketing spin, soulless products.

Be relevant. We still see labels that say something like, ‘this wine goes beautifully with salads, vegetables, fish, seafood, red meat, poultry, and cheese’ — and they just left out breakfast cereal. Tell us something real. Consumers, especially younger generations, want authenticity. They want transparency, and they want sustainability — not as a slogan, but as something they can actually see: light bottles, recyclable materials, solar energy, organic farming, biodiversity. Show them your vineyard. Tell them why you started this, why you planted there, why you’re making wine. Talk about your successes, but also your challenges and your failures. People connect far more with people than they do with brands.

And this doesn’t stop at the winery gate. Partner up with local restaurants, hotels, inns, cheesemakers, artists — build an ecosystem that celebrates a place. Because visitors don’t come to wine country looking for a bottle; they come looking for an experience.

We hear a lot about the decline in wine consumption, especially among young consumers. I think our industry, like many others, is also battling a lot of misinformation — health recommendations based on incomplete science aren’t very helpful. But I think the real story is much more nuanced than that. Every year we organize a wine fair, the Salon des Vins in Gatineau — we just had it on June 27th. I spent the whole day walking around the room with a big smile on my face, because I was so pleased and surprised by the number of people under 30 who were there, super engaged, tasting, asking questions, exchanging ideas with each other. They’re not turning their backs on wine — they’re just making different choices. They’re drinking less, but they’re drinking better, and they’re willing to spend far more than I did on wine when I was twenty or twenty-five, as long as they find authenticity, transparency, and sustainability — as long as the wine reflects their values.

In a few moments, we’re going to taste Chardonnays from across this country. Some will be richer, some leaner, some more reductive, some very fruity. But please don’t spend your time deciding which is best. Instead, ask yourself one question: what is this wine trying to tell me? Because every bottle of Chardonnay tells the story of a place.

And that’s where Canadian Chardonnay has arrived — we’ve found our voice. But that story only comes alive when someone shares it, when we make the right connection between the wine and the consumer. That’s our job, whether we’re growers, winemakers, retailers, writers, or simply people who love wine. Our challenge now is convincing the world that we can make great Chardonnay, making sure every bottle tells a story that only Canada can tell. And if we continue to do that — with authenticity, transparency, sustainability, and genuine hospitality — I think the future of Canadian Chardonnay is very bright.

Thank you.