Beyond John Rossignol's vineyard, where the leaves curl up golden brown to reveal large bunches of black grapes, the Northumberland Strait is flecked with whitecaps. The grey- shingled house has both a back deck to enjoy the view and a front porch to shelter from the wind. Several sheep and a young colt graze in the meadow.

When John Rossignol purchased this land in Little Sands, near Murray River in southeastern P.E.I., he wasn't sure what he wanted to do here. He just knew he wanted a place by the sea. In 1990, he left behind a successful business contracting for food processors in Ontario, sailed down the St. Lawrence with his wife, and built the house. With income from the Ontario business still coming in, Rossignol was in no hurry to make up his mind about what to do on P.E.I. He considered establishing a similar business in the Maritimes, but was reluctant.

"The old business involved working in other people's plants," explains Rossignol, "Which means that I'm on the road driving from one plant to another- all through the Maritimes in this case. 1 didn't really care to do that."

While he considered, Rossignol started making his own wine. He found wine making appealed to his need to tinker, trying different techniques, mixes of grapes, and even different fruits. Then he looked around and saw there were no commercial wineries on the Island, and decided he had discovered a niche in which he could grow.

The transition was a fairly natural one. He began reading about commercial wine making to fill in the gaps of what he had already learned from his hobby and his previous business. Working in beverage plants in Ontario made him familiar with the apparatus and the kind of building he would need, as well as the expectations of health departments. It took a year for the P.E.I. government to put in place the regulations required for a winery to operate on the Island.

In 1994, Rossignol began adding vines to the few he had planted for his hobby, eventually putting in nearly three hectares. Later on, he also worked with the Food Technology Centre in Charlottetown to develop testing protocols. The winery building was completed in the spring of 1995. That summer saw his first product, non-grape wines from frozen fruit harvested the previous year while waiting for the licence to come through. That fall saw the bottling of his first grape table wines.

Four years later, Rossignol has many successes. A production of 45,000 bottles in 1998, puts the winery about a year ahead in its five-year plan, with growth continuing at about 25% per year. Sales in the first couple of years were exclusive to the Island, and 90% of the wine is still sold in the home province. But the markets have been growing in the other Maritime provinces, and Ontario now lists Rossignol's strawberry wine.

In 1997, Rossignol took his wines on the road to see how they compared to the competition. At the Nova Scotia Tasters' Choice awards, Rossignol surprised more established Maritime wineries by taking first place for pinot noir and strawberry-rhubarb. Nor have international awards proven elusive. In two years of competition at Intervin in Buffalo and Toronto, Rossignol has brought home three silver and two bronze medals. Rossignol has found accolades on P.E.I. as well.

"He's a true artisan," says Stefan Czapalay, chef/owner of Seasons in Thyme in Summerside, one of Canada's 12 three-star restaurants. "He's creating from a passion. It's apparent in his product. It's pretty high-end."

Like any good wine, Rossignol's starts with the fruit-Valiant grapes grown in the field without pesticides. This is not too much of a hardship, because with so few grapes grown on the Island, there are few pests. Potato fields surround the winery, but the Colorado potato hectic is not interested in grapes. A steady, fresh breeze off the Northumberland Strait and good spacing between the rows keeps down fungus.

The province's failed excursion into tobacco farming has added another dimension to Rossignol's fruit supply. The collapse of that industry has left a surplus of greenhouse space, and Rossignol is farming some of it with grapes too tender to normally grow in this region: cabernet franc, merlot, and chardonnay. The grapes, about a hectare of them, are currently grown under contract. While growing grapes under glass is hardly traditional-they are the only greenhouse grapes in Canada that he knows of-the product has an old-style cleanliness.

"We don't spray anything. They're absolutely clean grapes," says Rossignol. "We're running an organic vineyard without the paperwork."

Traditional methods extend to the conditioning of the wine in oak barrels, a method which adds a dimension of flavour to premium reds and, not so traditionally, to Rossignol's Haneveldt Apple Cider.

Oak barrels matter. "I enjoy experimenting," says Rossignol. "We've been one of the most active wineries in Eastern Canada to employ oak barrels. No short- cuts, no oak chips, no oak seasonings- straight oak barrels."

It makes a difference, he says. With traditional barrel aging, some of the wine evaporates through the porous wood, intensifying the fruit at the same time as absorbing the oak flavour.

Every twist in the conversation with Rossignol reveals a new experiment-the blackberry mead planned for 1999, or what could prove to he his biggest success of all, the discovery of noble rot in the greenhouse. The coveted botritus mould, which grows on late-harvest grapes, is used in Europe to produce a very exclusive beverage.

No matter how successful his grape wines become, however, fruit wines will always be an important product at Rossignol Winery. Rossignol is dedicated to regional products, and speaks proudly of the ingredients that will go into the new mead-wild blackberries picked by a woman across the road and honey produced from hives on surrounding farms.

"Fruit wines are really the true regional product for the Maritimes and Eastern Seaboard," explains Rossignol. "So we're trying to raise the profile of fruit wines by winning medals with both fruit and table wines, just to establish in the eye of the consumer that the fruit wines are a quality item."

He has already convinced the customers at Stefan Czapalay's restaurant.

"I was very skeptical of what the quality would be," says Czapalay. "I was very impressed. We have two types of customers. One is looking for the big French wine experience and the other is coming to sample regional cuisine. A lot of restaurants like this have only big, pretentious French wines. They're thrilled to find a wine of Rossignol's quality in a restaurant like this."

With his keen palate and taste for experimentation, Rossignol is likely to continue to thrill customers for years to come.