One of the strong advantages of having government liquor outlets is that unscrupulous profit-minded private liquor outlets, preying on ignorant alcoholics, might attempt to pass off shoddy inferior product as being higher quality where a state monopoly liquor outlet definitely wouldn't. Oh wait..... HT: CanWest.
Note that I don't think that there's anything wrong with folks importing grapes or grape juice for wine-making. If the technology for turning grapes into wine is fairly homogeneous for low-end plonk, if there aren't substantial economies of scale, and if grape juice or whole grapes ship more easily than wine, I could see the argument for importing the juice and processing it in BC.
I just think it's hilarious that the government-owned liquor stores were in collusion with the producers to pass it off as fully domestic product. And it's doubly hilarious that if you want to be sure of getting the real deal, you do better by going to a privately owned BC-VQA shop that sells independently and (for now) privately certified Vintner's Quality Alliance wines. Wikipedia suggests that VQA certification is moving to a government body though....
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