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Mission Hill aims to put B.C. on the world wine map

Anthony von Mandl set out six years ago to rebuild his Mission Hill Family Estate winery, convinced the world would start taking British Columbia wines seriously.

He looked carefully at what his mentor Robert Mondavi did in launching his acclaimed 1966 winery at a time when California wines were not recognized for quality.

Mr. Mondavi not only applied quality winemaking techniques but also built the Napa Valley's first modern showpiece winery.

"When I studied carefully what Bob did in 1966, it was clear to me that a landmark showpiece winery was absolutely essential to the Okanagan," Mr. von Mandl says.

The new Mission Hill winery, which officially opened on Saturday, soaked up $40-million and is an architectural tour de force without rival among Canadian wineries. It also is a powerful marketing tool. Mr. von Mandl reports the 160,000 visitors expected this season are not just buying more wine after taking sold-out tours, but also are buying more expensive wines.

"It is pretty spectacular," Nancy Cameron, manager of Tourism Kelowna, said. "Mission Hill has developed a very distinctive experience that appeals to the high-yield tourist."

The winery should give the Okanagan a leg up on the Niagara region in competing for international prestige, although the lead could narrow in three years when Vincor International Ltd. opens its recently announced Le Clos Jordan in Ontario, flamboyantly designed by California-based architect Frank Gehry. It is intended to bring what Vincor calls "global attention to the Niagara Peninsula."

Le Clos Jordan's modern expressionistic building echoes Mr. Gehry's contentious Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

For Mission Hill, Seattle architect Tom Kundig fashioned a more traditional winery with extravagant features ranging from landscaping with mature trees to a reception hall dominated by a $600,000 Marc Chagall tapestry. The 12-storey bell tower (with four bronze bells cast in France) and the expansive courtyard flanked by an amphitheatre create the ambiance of a Tuscan hill town. The cellars, blasted from the volcanic rock of the mountain top, have room for 6,500 barrels. One candle-lit cellar included on the standard wine tour suggests a coolly dark European cathedral.

Mr. von Mandl set out with a far-less-theatrical design in mind for rebuilding the hilltop winery, built in 1966 and owned by Mr. von Mandl since 1981. "It's way beyond a dream come true," he said. "I would never have imagined there could be a way to finance a winery like this in the Okanagan."

The financing has come largely from the huge success of Mike's Hard Lemonade, a flavoured vodka-based beverage launched in 1996 by The Mark Anthony Group Inc., the private holding company through which Mr. von Mandl runs his wine and alcoholic beverages empire. While Mission Hill is a profitable winery, making more than 100,000 cases a year, it is believed the major share of Mark Anthony's annual revenue -- estimated to exceed $300-million a year -- comes from sales of Mike's.

The river of cash supported Mr. von Mandl's perfectionism. Many of the winery's design elements, including furniture, were modelled full scale in plywood. Mr. Kundig drew 70 designs of the bell tower before he and the winery owner were satisfied.

"There is no doubt that Mike's was extremely helpful in allowing Mission Hill to go out and invest as we did," Mr. von Mandl says. In addition to rebuilding the winery, Mission Hill since 1994 has acquired nearly 1,000 acres of vineyards, or about 20% of all the vineyards in the Okanagan.

"Mission Hill is a family business unto its own now," he says. "It has the size and economics to grow and prosper on its own."

Born in Vancouver to Czech immigrants, Mr. von Mandl, 52, set up as a wine merchant 30 years ago in Vancouver.

When he bought Mission Hill in 1981, the rundown winery not far from Kelowna had been through two receiverships and had little going for it but its hilltop location with spectacular views across Okanagan Lake. Its sales improved under its new owners but the real turnaround began in 1992 when John Simes, then the chief winemaker at New Zealand's largest winery, was hired by Mission Hill.

That fall, he made a Chardonnay that won a major award two years later in Britain.

The publicity and the immediate jump in sales prompted Mr. von Mandl to buy vineyards and exercise more control over the quality of the grapes he was giving Mr. Simes to work with. With the subsequent success of Mike's, a concept beverage he spotted in Australia, the intensely ambitious Mr. von Mandl now wants Mission Hill to become "one of the 10 top wineries in the world."

He believes he is on the way. Recently, his hosts at a private dinner surprised him by serving two red wines, identifying them only after they had been tasted. One was a 1998 Mission Hill Merlot, which sells for about $25. The other was a 1995 Château Pétrus, which sells for more than US$1,000.

Mr. von Mandl says he was proud of the results when the wines were identified.

"I loved the Pétrus, don't get me wrong," he says. "The Pétrus is an extraordinary wine. But the consensus was in a blind tasting that we were not so certain that people would necessarily select the Pétrus. To show so well is tremendously rewarding."

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