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THE GLOBE AND MAlL SATURDAY. lUNE 12. 2004 Hollywood and vines Taking a leaf from such luminaries as Francis Ford Coppola and Gérard Depardieu, TV producer Seaton McLean is opening his own winery, at a farm he bought with his wife, Sonja Smits, writes GAYLE MacDONALD f TV producer and filmmaker Seaton McLean makes wine the way he gives directions. he should have a vintage first bar- vest. His instnictions. travelling east from Toronto to get to his winâ€" ery in Prince Edward County. were precise. down to each half-kilo- metre. road sign and winding turn. It's beautiful countryside, where people still paint their family name on the barn, heed cow crossings, and perch wagon wheels at the end of long. creed drives. At Chase Road (which, McLean explained, is 1.5-kilometres past a little white variety story on the left. usually closed). you journey along until you hit Closson Road. Finally. two hours after leaving Toronto. you arrive at the blink-and-you'll- miss-it intersection that is home to the newest business venture of McLean and five partners. Aptly named the Closson Chase winery, after six years of preparation it is li- nally ready to sell its first Chardon- nay 2001 later this month. McLean. along with his wife. ac- tress Sonja Smits, is pan of an ever- growing number of show-biz folk venturing into the wine business. Everyone from Francis Ford Cop- pola to Bob Dylan and golfer Greg (the Great White Shark) Norman is getting in on the vineyard craze. Barenaked Ladies' Steve Page is a raging oenophile who owns a piece of Vines magazine. "Canada‘s guide to the world of wine." Other celebrity vintners include racing legend Mario .>\ndretti, who has a winery in Napa Valley not far from Coppola (who at this year’s Acade- my Awards sewed his Blanc do Blancs to celebrate daughter Sofia's original-screenplay win for Last in Translation.) Norman grows grapes in his na- tivc Australia, as does Olivia New» .ton John. Actor Sam Neill owns a vineyard in New Zealand. while Sir Cliff Richard planted his in Portu- gal‘s Algarve. Sting has a 445â€"acre wine~producing Tuscan estate. McLean's winery and SO-acre vineyard is not flashy or overly large â€" a dandelion-carpeted retreat where he and his master vintner. Deb Paskus, have been painstake ingly planting and pruning their French-imported vines since l998. They now have 17 acres ofvines, 80 per cent Chardonnay and 20 per cent Pinot Noir. The official opening of the Clos- sonChasewineryislune27.Among the expected attendees is another Prince Edward County upstart vint- ' ner. Toronto chef Jamie Kennedy. And McLean's pal Dan Aykroyd may pop in to swirl a glass. McLean, his fraught 10ch flying about his shoulders. has parked his utility vehicle in his newly paved parking lot, and is proudly con- ducting a tour of the Bu.rgundy~ coloured barn. with its cobblestone floor. tasting room. barrel room, and derelict pig barn â€" recently to furbished as a wine cellar that uses geothermal physics (involving pipes buried far below ground lev- ell to cool and heat the wine. Owning a winery is a romantic idea that clearly appeals to the or!- iste in famous people. But as Innis- killin co-founder Donald Ziraldo points out, it's also a lot of hard work. and hugely risky. “Lots ofrich people buy wineries. In fact, pretty much every new winery in Nepal is started by the very rich." says the Niagara Peninsula winemaker. whose specialty is ice wine. “You don't do this to get rich." agrees McLean. whose partners in- clude best chums Michael Mac- Millan (CEO of Alliance Atlantis Communications, the cntertain~ merit company. which McLean co» founded). lawyer Bill l-‘anjoy, docu- mentary-maker Andy Thomson and Bay Street wheeler-dealer Gene Mchmey â€" all of whom are under the tutelage of Paskus. one of Ontario's best viticulturists. "It's extremely high~risk and it's also a high money-out business," says McLean. who was downsized r1)". 4 McLean at Closson Chaise winery: 'Being in the Canadian production business probably fortified me for the vagaries of the wine business.‘ choose this?" At least part til the answer: llL' could afford it, Plus he .itlorcs wine. especially int-.ity t';tbct'ncts Sitting on theStonpoutsitlt-lusbarn ' ‘tor git-inont'hantlandglassnft' sson Chase rod in the other, McLean adr mits he didn‘t forest-c the impor tant role [ills new business would have in his life- "Timing is everything I've come to realize that about life." says McLean, whose IV credits lll- cludc thc lllfltls version of 77!? Tutt- [[qu Zone. and whose films include Foolproof, The 515! Stale and Own- ing Mnhowny. He takes another puffon his cigar and recounts how. if the University of Ottawa hadn't misplaced his application, he would never have wound up at fdm school at Queen‘s in Kingston. Onl.. with MacMillan and Janice Plait. rhey would never have start- ed Atlantis Communications. winch merged with Alliance. to be- come this country‘s biggest enter- tainment company. Depardieu (left) and Coppola: stars of their very own vineyards. “l coincidentally started thevine- yard six years ago. and it's given me something. the last six mondis. to focus on," says McLean. “So 1 haven't found myself without a job. I‘vejust sort oftransitioned to a dif- ferent type of (ob. " As he wrote in his November. 2003. newsletter to his winery's so- called 100 Club members. wine- making "is all about time .. . and care and tenacity." He adds. “We should have boldfaced the ten- acity part. " in 2002. his first test acre. only two weeks away from harvesting. was ravaged by swallows. The non year. raccoons had their own wine tasting and wiped ottt the 2003 crop five days before it was due to be harvested. Then another calamity: McLean had ordered 7% acres worth ol'vines from France. which a container-ship captain pitched overboard to avoid his ship's sinkâ€" ing during a storm. "If you’re prone to freaking out on the basis of bad things happen ing, you would never get into the wine business." he opines. "1 figure being in the Canadian production business probably fortified me for the vagaries of the wine business." he adds, laughing. McLean, who had NewfoundA land artist David Blackwood design his red. white and blue label, is jus- tifiably proud of what he's wrung from these grapes. His wine is smooth with little bite. something he attributes to the oak barrels in Simply Red singer Mick Ilucknall owns vineyards on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily, Of all the winerhscssed celebs. France's Gérard Dcpardieu stands out as particularly smitten. With vineyards in the Loire. the Langue- doc. the Médoc and Morocco. De- pardicu's business card is said to list his occupation as acIeur-vigne- ran. He was quoted last year telling a British wine critic that each vin- tage drives him to distraction. "a litâ€" tle likca pregnancy, worrying about the birth oflhc wine." REVIEW-R11 which the wine is stored. When he and Smits bought the farm from thl Closson - who was using it to store his '57 Chevy i there were three other wineries in the region. Today. there are 33. Kennedy, who just hosted his an- nual fish fry at the Hillier town hall. is one of a legion of Prince Edward County converts, who like the prices in the area and the growing climate. "More and more people are agreeing with Debra that the soil and conditions down here are ideal for the wine varieties that we’re growing. Unfortunately, you can't grow a Cabernet in Ontario." adds McLean. “At least, We never tasted one that I'd want to spend time drinking‘ McLean's love of wine started after he accompanied a pal to a wine auction in the late eighties. He now regularly keeps about 400 hot- tles. "My problem with collecting is 1 end up drinking it all," McLean says with a shrug. "l have people come to dinner. and Sonia will get mad at me because ['11 open an '82 Margaux (which at restaurants can cost up to $800 a bottle]. But i figure il'it's there, it should be drunk. Hell. it's already 20 years old." Initially. Closson Chase hopes to produce 375 cases a year. but the partners are aiming to have 4000 cases. a respectable amount for a boutique operator. For his part, Niagara's Zirttldo agrees that Prince Edward County is steadily gaining credence and Cd chet in wine circles. But on a recent trip to speak to the region's vintA ners. he cautioned them to go slow ly, "l basically told them. ‘Don't try to compete with Niagara. Napa or Burgundy. lust make wines that an- indigenous to your area. and sell them to the very extensive tourism industry that is there, . . .Creatc lo- cal demand, and once you do that. you can grow outside the area? Good advice as far as McLean is concerned: He's in no hurry to rush his wine. his career or his life right now. On this day. the sun is shining and the vines are stretching, The birds. coons and grape drownings aside. McLean is sanguine about his prospects as a winemaker. "The rewards are that you get to sit here and drink your own wine." says McLean. "You get to look out over your vineyard, have friends come down and experience it with you ~ and hopefully get to the point where you have a wine you can share with the rest of the world. " out ofa job at his own company late last year. when it decided to move its focus away from the high»risk production business. He left the firm, after more than 25 years, with mixed emotions. but with a few million in the bank. “in other words, you spend a lot to'get to the point where you start to get back some money. It's funny. it's totally like the film- anti televi- sion-production business." says McLean. laughing. "The parallels between the two are amazing. l've thought about it a lot: Why did I