One seller's loss is another cellar's gain in B.C.

OLIVER, B.C. -- Here in British Columbia's south Okanagan, you wouldn't know the world's financial system is teetering. Or that there is a federal election under way. No, here in paradise all they are talking about is the harvest and what kind of year it's going to be for Gewurztraminers and Ehrenfelsers.

Jim Wyse stands on the patio outside the tasting room at his Burrowing Owl winery and looks every bit the contented man. He should. He and his wife, Midge, have one of the most successful wineries in the country.

In many respects, Mr. Wyse epitomizes the modern winemaker in B.C. and now he's cashing in - big-time.

His story, like those of many successful entrepreneurs, is a mix of guts and smarts, with some impeccable timing thrown in. Mr. Wyse was a Vancouver-based developer who was selling condos when he came across an ad in an Okanagan newspaper for a winery that was for sale.

 The year was 1993. The free-trade agreement with the United States had recently turned the wine industry in Canada upside down. No longer was it going to be able to keep better-quality wines out of the market. The horrible cheap plonk B.C. was mostly known for at the time, the stuff we used to get drunk on before high-school dances in the 1970s, wasn't going to do it any more.

Many B.C. vintners believed the province just didn't have the climate to make high-quality wine.

The federal government at the time offered wine growers more than $8,000 an acre to remove their undesirable varieties and plant premium European stock. Many growers took the subsidies and ran.

Mr. Wyse bought his vineyard from an owner who didn't have the stomach to go through the conversion. The purchase involved nearly 290 acres of land. He immediately hired a distinguished winemaker who specialized in European varietals - the merlots, syrahs and cabernet sauvignons.

"We kind of stumbled into this whole thing," Mr. Wyse was saying the other day at his winery just south of here. "But we decided early on to focus on quality in every aspect of the operation and it's worked - in many ways beyond our wildest imagination."

His arrival precipitated a return of winemakers to the Okanagan Valley. Some, of course, never left. Biggies like Inniskillin, Sumac Ridge, Mission Hill and others had the financial wherewithal to make the grape conversion and hang in there for however long it took for it to work. (Or not).

But the story of the B.C. wine industry has been the recent proliferation of the independent growers, people like Mr. Wyse, who bet their life's fortune that the region's arid, desert-like conditions (for several months of the year anyway) could produce wine every bit as good as that being made in France or California.

Once people saw the success that winemakers were having in the premium-wine market, the stampede was on. In the late 1980s, there were maybe 14 wineries in operation in B.C. Today, there are 143, with 20 licences pending. In 1991-92, wine sales in the province amounted to $6.8-million. In 2006-07, it had climbed to $151-million.

It also didn't hurt that aging boomers started preferring wine to beer in mind-boggling numbers. And that they had the cash to pay for top-notch stuff.

Mr. Wyse is now sitting on a gold mine. The property he once purchased for $4,000 an acre in 1993 is now going for $150,000 per and climbing. He has since sold some of his 290 acres and now has about 140 on which he is producing.

Mr. Wyse won't say just how much his operation pulls in, but he said one measure of how valuable vineyards like his are can be found in the sale earlier this year of Black Hills Estate Winery to Vineguest. He said Black Hills had only 26 acres and sold for $11.3-million. He said 26 acres produces about 6,000 cases of wine a year.

"So a 6,000-case winery is worth about $11-million," Mr. Wyse claims.

His winery produces 30,000 cases a year.

Some wineries, Burrowing Owl and Hester Creek among them, are also adding restaurants and guesthouses to their operations to cash in on the booming wine tourist trade. That would be the well-coiffed set that sometimes travels in packs, squired around in limousines from winery to winery in order to avoid that dreaded holiday killer, the DUI.

The annual grape harvest is just under way. The tourists are beginning to pour in. The annual Okanagan wine festival takes place in the early part of next month and will attract visitors from around the world. It's hard to fathom just how far the industry has come in such short time. Awards from international competitions against traditional winemaking powers from Europe and elsewhere are beginning to stack up.

Winemaking is evidently not only good for the heart but good for the soul too. Mr. Wyse was 55 when he rolled the dice on the wine business. Today he is 70 but looks 15 years younger.

"What can I say?" he smiles. "It's not a bad life. It's not work. It's fun."

And it shows.