Baby Duck

In its heyday Baby Duck was a very successful product. It is a sweet fuzzy wine modeled after Mateus the popular Portugal wine

In 1952 Brights Wines purchased the Fred Marsh Wine Company. At this time the Fred Marsh winery was working on developing a sweet sparkling wine. It was introduced to the market as Brights Winette. They used Labrusca grapes which could be obtained rather cheaply, This allowed Brights Winette to be sold at a low price.

Brights had control of the Sparling wine market until Andrew Peller of Peller Estate Winery decided to enter this market creating a line of Chanté wines In 1971 they created Baby Duck a soft-drink-sweet blend of red and white Chanté wines.

Hugely successful, Baby Duck was the best-selling domestic wine during the 1970s and it hatched numerous imitators: Canada Duck, Love-A-Duck, Kool Duck, Daddy Duck and Fuddle Duck were joined by Cold Turkey, etc… All of these wines driving the runaway expansion in the wine trade in the 1960s and 1970s were concocted from water, sugar and grapes that were judged unsuitable for making good quality dry table wines.

Baby Duck peaked in 1973 selling over 8 million bottles, many people believe its popularity had to do with its easy to pronounce name. Baby Duck was originally made from “musky” native labrusca varieties such as concord and bath - and Andrés simply couldn't get enough of them. As well as encouraging local grape growers to plant more of these high-yielding and hardy varieties, B.C. wineries were obliged to import grapes and inexpensive finished wines from California.

Andres still produces Baby Duck with 7% alcoho.l In 1980 Andres downgraded it from Wine to A Refreshment drink.

~ In 1975 there were 3315 imorted wines in Canada and only 1875 domestic products.
~ In 1975 the big four Wine producers were Andres, Brights Chteau Gai and Jordon

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