The tasting room for visitors will be 1,500 square feet and be surrounded by gardens, lined with cobblestone paths and graced with waterfalls.

"I’ve left nothing to chance," he said in an interview, explaining he hired a professional winemaker. The group also budgeted 10 per cent of their money for budgeting with an Ottawa firm but later upped the ante. His market is Ottawa and Montreal, not Toronto though its only 60 miles away. Niagara already has the Toronto market, he says.

He’s confident the winery will make money. "This is like offering candy to a baby," he says. "People want the experience. People are buying an experience."

This fall he’ll process grapes from the Niagara region. In March, he’ll start making his own wine, a modest batch, but he’ll triple output the following year. "Starting slowly gives us an opportunity to work our way in," he says.

He has about 30 acres of vines, the most in the region, but his first harvest this month will only be between 10 and 12 tonnes. While the hot summer had been ideal for grape growing, his vines are only three-years-old. It takes three years to get a crop and five years for the vines to reach their maximum yield.

Peddlesden grew up on an apple farm and then a beef farm so the amount of work getting a winery started should have been no surprise to him. But it was. Years back, he went to Niagara on a tour of wineries and vineyards because he thought it would be "an easy lifestyle."

Now he tells people looking to come in to start the leisurely life of a county squire to "stay with your day job. Some days you want to back yourself into a corner and cry."

The investment is not light. Peddlesden and partners will have invested $2 million or more to get rolling.

The region has about 400 acres in vines with about 5,000 acres maximum capable of producing grapes for a wine industry. People who own land are "hunkered down" waiting to see what is happening, he said. Peddlesden’s group has 200 more acres, 50 for maple production and 150 more for more grapes.

The limestone based soils are similar to Burgundy in France, a prime wine producing region. Chardonnay and pinot noir will probably be the main wines sold in Prince Edward, but local wines take on their own flavour, produced from the type of soil in the region.

One concern has been the low temperatures, reaching up to minus 30 Centigrade. Peddlesden says he’s installed three big wind machines, which blows away the lower cold air and replaces it with higher, warmer air. "We researched this (frost effect)," he said. "We’re not concerned."

The other two wineries are at Waupoos in the southern part of the County. The first on the scene, Ed Neuser, has about 20 acres of vines while Grant Howes has 10 acres. He operates the County Cider Company, and produces some of the best quality cider in the province. He will begin to sell wine in the fall.