California asks Quebec to return U.S. wine to shelves amid wine industry struggles
California Congress members sent letters to Quebec last month asking the province to put American wine back on its shelves after 15 months of restricted sales in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian imports.
The first letter to Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette came from a bipartisan group of 14 U.S. House members. The representatives included Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson, whose district covers much of the state’s wine country, former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. David Valadao, who represents another agriculture-heavy district. The second letter to Fréchette, which was sent a few weeks later and mirrored the first, was sent by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
“Reopening the market to American wine would restore consumer choice and signal a commitment to restoring fair and balanced trade for Quebecois consumers and American wineries who have no connection to the underlying trade disputes,” the federal lawmakers wrote.
Schiff added in his letter that he hoped to visit Fréchette and other Canadian leaders “about this and other issues” in October.
The letters come at a time when the wine industry is being hit from all sides, facing declining exports and imports, pest threats and historic low consumption levels. The wine and grape industries are billion-dollar enterprises in California. The state produces around 80% of all wine in the U.S., according to industry groups.
Canada was America’s top wine export market, representing 36% and 460 million dollars-worth of all U.S. wine exports in 2024, according to Sacramento-based Wine Institute. In 2025, Wine Institute data shows that exports to Canada fell to 12%, a $357 million loss in export value.
Two of Canada’s 10 provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, are still selling American alcoholic beverages. Those provinces represent smaller markets compared to those in Canada’s largest provinces, Ontario and Quebec.
Trump has repeatedly referred to Canada as the “51st state,” angering Canadians and raising tensions between the two countries.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said last month that he would lift the province’s ban on U.S. alcohol if Trump renewed America’s longstanding trade pact with Canada and Mexico, according to the Toronto Star. The trade agreement, known as USMCA, expired this week, but a version of the alliance remains as the Trump administration continues to seek changes.
Delegations from Wine Institute and the Sacramento-based California Association of Winegrape Growers — two of the industry’s largest lobbying groups — met with members of Congress, including Schiff, in recent months and urged them to prioritize getting American wine back on Canada’s shelves.
Both Wine Institute and the California Association of Winegrape Growers applauded the recent letters from Congress to Quebec, saying getting American wine back into Canada is crucial to aiding their struggling industry.
“Restoring access is critically important for wineries, growers and the many businesses connected to the wine sector on both sides of the border,” a Wine Institute statement said.
Natalie Collins, president of the California Association of Winegrape Growers, referred to what is happening to the wine industry as “death by a thousand cuts,” saying the Canada piece is “definitely one of them.”
“We have spent decades building relationships (to Canada) with family grapegrowers and winemakers and seeing everything fall apart over no fault of our industry has been devastating,” Collins said.
Dirk Heuvel has helped run McManis Family Vineyards in Ripon in San Joaquin County since 2008. Canadian exports, largely to Ontario, made up approximately 40% of his family’s export sales — about 75,000 cases — leading up to the country’s restrictions on U.S. alcohol. From July 2025 to now, this number fell to approximately 5% of export sales, or about 1,000 cases.
On top of the export hits, the family-owned vineyard has seen a significant drop in its bulk wine sales to larger U.S. wine brands, Heuvel said. The vineyard’s primary business is growing and crushing grapes to produce bulk wine for these buyers, some of which are also managing the Canadian market loss.
Heuvel is grateful for the support from Congress, but he called the letters “overdue.” He is not optimistic the alcohol restrictions will be lifted in time to support growers for the 2026 season based on the current mood of U.S.-Canadian trade negotiations.
While his vineyard has enough bulk wine business to keep it up and running without Canada, Heuvel, who is also a board member of the California Association of Winegrape Growers, said other vintners will not be as fortunate.
“I think there are a lot of wineries that if the Canadian market doesn’t open back up, they flat out will not survive this,” Heuvel said.
