Stands for
Vintner's Quality Alliance. The Vintner's Quality Alliance awards the VQA seal to British Columbia's wines that have been tested and found to meet established appellation and wine-making standards set by the
British Columbia Wine Institute These standards are a kind of 'quality assurance'. I don't know most of them, but the big one is that the wine contains only BC grapes, and no other kinds of fruits of other weird ingredients. Some people think that just because a bottle of wine says VQA, it means it will be a good bottle of wine. According to my mother, this is not at all true. Smaller wineries who make damned good wines cannot be included in the VQA because they include things like a touch of cherry juice, or they make their wines from blackberries. Good wines, but they aren't allowed in the club.
I don't know a thing about wine, but my mother told me all this. the nodeshell was empty (but that's not an excuse)
Highlights of the appellation and wine-making VQA standards:
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Wines bearing the label designation "Product of British Columbia" are produced from 100% British Columbia grown grapes;
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Optimum growing standards have been established;
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Wines bearing the name of a viticultural area are derived from a minimum of 85% of the grapes grown in the named area;
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Wines bearing the designated name of a grape variety are derived from a minimum of 85% of the variety;
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Where a vintage date is stated on the label, at least 85% of the wine is obtained from the designated year of harvest;
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Wines labeled as estate bottled are produced from grapes grown in a vineyard owned by the winery, and all processing steps -- from crush to bottling -- are performed at the bottling and selling winery.