Grocery Night in Canada

It’s Thursday night and I’m at a BCLiquor Store. It’s a thing we have in Canada, these government-managed moonshine shacks next to the grocery store.

Inside, store management has taken decisive action in the North American trade war. The California wines have been routed from their shelves. Black cloth shrouds the once full displays. There’s a sign marking the battlefield: “Buy Canadian.” The sign has a cheerful maple leaf border and an arrow directing thirsty shoppers to the nearby display of Okanagan vintages.

It would be frankly unpatriotic of me to not buy a bottle of Viognier at this point.

At the register, the cashier and another customer are discussing those empty shelves, this strange situation, “The goddamn idiot down there.”

“Why doesn’t somebody do something?”

“I know!”

“Like, can’t someone in his family intervene? Their Congress or whatever? Didn’t they make a system to stop this?”

All three of us grimmace at the shared understanding that Congress or whatever will not intervene. We tut and groan.

A tv bolted to the ceiling is playing CBC news on mute. The Prime Minister has something to say about this situation. Somebody has to be the leader of the free world and why can’t it be us Canadians? We’re reasonable and hardy and thrive in a variety of climates. The chyron on the screen announces the latest tariff rates like it’s Hockey Night in Canada displying face off percentages. Someone’s going to win 34% of NAFTA’s husk.

It’s possible to time travel with a bottle of wine. You can taste the past there, what the sun and the rain was like in 2022 when the grapes were mashed and the cork pushed into place. I’ve started buying wines based on how much I want to remember the year it was vinted. I pity the winemakers trying to bottle this year.