Why a Woman Running a Licensed Wine Import Company in Two Provinces Is Rarer Than It Should Be
British Columbia sold $1.14 billion in wine at retail in the most recent fiscal year. Nationally, wine sales hit $7.9 billion, and nearly three of every four dollars spent on red wine in Canada went to an import. This is not a niche industry. It’s a billion-dollar pipeline, and almost nobody controls access to it.
Canada’s wine market runs through provincial liquor monopolies, which means most importers only ever operate in one province at a time. The few who work across both BC and Alberta, the same footprint required to run a real Western Canadian business, are a short, named list. Every founder on that list who could be identified is a man. One of them currently sits as president of the trade association representing the entire industry.
Trina Plamondon owns Carpa Vino, a licensed wine import company operating in both provinces, five family producers deep, built without a family name, inherited capital, or an existing distributor relationship to walk through the door with. She taught herself the trade from scratch, earning her Diploma from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust the same way she’s built everything else in her life: from the ground up.
Women aren’t absent from Canadian wine. They show up as consultants, as club founders, as educators. What’s missing is this specific seat: licensed importer and program operator combined, the person who owns the pipeline and runs what happens once the wine is in the building. That combination is rare across genders. It is close to nonexistent among women.
“A billion dollars, and only a handful of people control who gets in,” Plamondon says. “That’s not a crowded market. It’s a door that’s locked for most, so I made a key and walked right in. Now I’m holding it open, giving other women the head start I never got.”
Two provinces. Five producers. One of very few women who’ve built this from nothing. Let’s see what happens next.