A bipartisan group of California lawmakers has written to Quebec Premier Christine Frechette, pleading with her to restore market access for American wine after Canadian provincial bans wiped out nearly $357 million in export revenue and forced wineries across the state to lay off workers or shut their doors entirely.
The letter, sent June 24, represents an unusual spectacle: elected officials from the nation's largest wine-producing state asking a foreign provincial leader to undo damage that flows directly from a trade dispute between Washington and Ottawa. Canada is the largest export market for American wine. California accounts for roughly 80 percent of all U.S. wine production. And for nearly eighteen months, Canadian provinces have kept American bottles off their shelves in retaliation against President Trump's trade policies.
The result has been financial carnage for an industry that had nothing to do with the tariff fight, and a scramble by California politicians to find someone, anyone, willing to help.
The Wine Institute, California's leading winery advocacy group, reported that U.S. wine exports to Canada plunged at least 78 percent between 2024 and 2025. The group put the total cost to American wineries at nearly $357 million in a single year and said provincial bans affected nearly 95 percent of family-owned small- and medium-sized wineries, contributing to hundreds of layoffs.
The Wine Institute did not mince words about the scale of the damage:
"Full-year 2025 data now confirms this is the most catastrophic single-year trade disruption in the history of US wine exports."
By 2026, the wreckage had moved from spreadsheets to storefronts. E. & J. Gallo Winery, the Modesto-based giant, closed parts of its business. Ernest Vineyards in Healdsburg shut down. Margins Wine in Watsonville shut down. These are real operations in real California towns, not abstractions on a trade negotiator's whiteboard.
The bipartisan letter to Premier Frechette frames the appeal in terms of mutual benefit, arguing that Quebec consumers and American producers both lose when wine shelves go bare over a dispute neither side started.
"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 lawmakers also acknowledged the lopsided harm the bans have inflicted on small producers who had no hand in federal trade policy:
"Unfortunately, the restriction on American wine has had damaging consequences for regional consumers, businesses, and producers who had no influence over national policies."
That last line deserves a second read. California's own elected officials are conceding, in writing, that the people they represent had "no influence" over the national policies that triggered the retaliation, and that they are suffering anyway.
U.S. Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, joined House colleagues in signing the June 24 letter. Schiff has also introduced a package of six bills aimed at expanding support and market access for California growers. One measure would direct $5 billion in economic assistance through the USDA to specialty crop producers, a category that covers fruit, vegetable, tree nut, and horticultural growers.
There is a catch. Wineries themselves would not qualify directly for that aid. Grape growers who supply wine producers could be eligible, but the distinction matters. A winery watching its Canadian revenue vanish cannot tap the fund. The farmer who sold those grapes might, eventually, if the bill passes and the USDA writes the rules.
Schiff struck a personal note in his letter to the Quebec premier:
"As a US Senator on the Senate Agriculture Committee, I have had the great fortune of spending time with and learning about the challenges and opportunities of California's winegrowers. They take great pride in their work, are essential to the state and national economy, and have brought tremendous value, in culture and in taste, to Americans and Canadians alike."
Pleasant words. Whether they move a Canadian premier remains to be seen. Frechette has not publicly responded.
Back home, California Assemblymembers Damon Connolly and Rhodesia Ransom introduced Assembly Bill 1585, which would have required wine labeled "American" to be made from grapes grown in the United States. The bill was pulled from a California Senate hearing after it became clear it lacked enough votes to advance.
The failure of AB 1585 is telling. Even within California's own legislature, a body not known for its reluctance to regulate, lawmakers could not muster the votes to pass a labeling standard for domestic wine. The reasons for the shortfall have not been disclosed publicly, but the outcome leaves the state with one fewer tool to protect its signature agricultural product.
The broader pattern here is familiar and worth naming plainly. Two national governments engage in a tariff dispute. Provincial and state leaders respond with retaliatory measures aimed at maximum political visibility, pulling American whiskey and wine off Canadian shelves makes headlines and sends a message. But the people who absorb the blow are not trade negotiators or cabinet secretaries. They are family vineyard owners in Healdsburg, cellar workers in Modesto, and small-batch winemakers in Watsonville who woke up one morning to discover their largest foreign market had vanished.
Nearly 95 percent of family-owned small- and medium-sized wineries felt the impact, the Wine Institute reported. Hundreds of workers lost jobs. Three named operations closed or shrank in 2026 alone. And the industry's advocates now describe the situation as the worst single-year trade disruption in the history of American wine exports.
California's lawmakers responded by writing a polite letter to a foreign premier and introducing legislation that either cannot pass or does not directly cover the businesses most in need. Schiff's six-bill package may have merit on paper, but its $5 billion specialty-crop measure bypasses wineries and routes aid to growers, a distinction that matters when the tasting room has already gone dark.
Several important details remain unclear. Which specific Canadian provinces enacted the bans, and are all of them still in effect? Has Quebec signaled any willingness to reconsider? What were the precise objections that sank AB 1585 in the California Senate? And how many more wineries face closure if the export freeze continues into 2027?
None of these questions have public answers yet. What is clear is that California's wine industry, an $80-billion-plus sector that defines entire regions of the state, has been caught in a vise between federal trade policy and foreign retaliation, with its own state government unable to offer meaningful relief.
When your best play is asking a Canadian premier to please put your product back on the shelf, you have already lost the initiative. California's vintners deserve better than a letter and a legislative package that doesn't quite reach them.
