In Prince Edward County, award-winning chef Willi Fida is almost a household name. On any given summer evening, every one of his elegant European-style restaurant's 45 seats is filled with tourists dining on the local products he prepares as healthy French cuisine that is famous in southeastern Ontario and further afield.

Fida's patrons, who come from as far away as Toronto and Montreal, dine on pheasant, lamb and fresh perch prepared with herbs he grows in his own garden at Angeline's Restaurant Inn and Spa, a converted Victorian house in the quaint tourist village of Bloomfield, about 30 kilometres south of Belleville.

A renowned chef at the former Chateauneuf restaurant and the Harbour Castle Hotel in Toronto, Fida was the first of a growing num- ber of big-city, big-name chefs looking for culinary opportunities in the mostly rural Prince Edward County. The permanent population is 25,000, although that doubles during the summer months.

"They call me the grandfather of the chefs in the county," Fida says.

Michael Lea, Business Edge
Chef Willi Fida has reason to toast the success of Angeline's Restaurant Inn and Spa in Bloomfield.

When Fida and wife Monika opened Angeline's in 1988, Bloomfield was a regular working village with one other restaurant, a convenience store, three bed and breakfasts, and several boarded- up storefronts. Prince Edward County was still a struggling rural community.

Today it's a much different story.

"We're experiencing a rural renaissance," says Dan Taylor, the county's economic development officer, who left a Toronto ad agency job to start a small winery and oversee the county's economic development.

Known as the Garden of Canada in the early 1900s, Prince Edward County once produced 50 per cent of all the tomatoes grown in Canada and was famous for its canning industry, Taylor says.

The county fell into relative obscurity, however, until about 15 years ago when artists and artisans from Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal inexplicably began to migrate into the region in ever increasing numbers. Today there are more than 100 artisans in the county.

As the artists began to arrive in growing numbers, so did the Baby Boomers and young families with children looking for weekend escapes or more permanent respite from the big cities.

Other newcomers include hobby farmers, manufacturers, computer specialists, writers, wellness practitioners, TV producers, landscape gardeners, organic farmers, financial consultants, viticulturalists, tradespeople, labourers, filmmakers and winemakers.

Taylor calls them the "new settlers."

It is the wine industry, however, that has brought much of the attention to Prince Edward County.

The first 20 acres of grapes were planted in 1999 after it was surmised that the area's limestone-rich soil would make fertile ground for Vitis vinifera vines, which prefer cool climates for ripening.

Photos by Michael Lea, Business Edge
Visitors are flocking to the streets of Picton in rural Prince Edward County.

These vines produce some of the world's finest wines, such as pinot noir, riesling, chardonnay and cabernet franc.

Six years later, there are 50 vineyards in the county and more than 600 acres under vine, along with nine wineries - making Prince Edward County the second-largest viticultural area in Ontario, after Niagara.

Since 2000, more than $30 million has been invested in the local wine industry and three more wineries are expected to open in the next 12 to 18 months. As a result, self-guided food and wine tours are now becoming popular in the county.

Among the wine investors is the Granger family, which owns 50 acres of vines at The Grange of Prince Edward Estate Winery in Hillier.

The winery was launched by Caroline Granger and her father Robert Granger, a Toronto lawyer who retired from his practice three years ago to run The Grange with his daughter.

A former fashion model in Europe, Caroline Granger hand-planted the first 3,000 vines herself in 1999 and ran the winery until her father joined her in 2002. They now produce chardonnay, riesling, gamay and rosé, and have another 200 acres on which they may grow more vines.

Since wine is a good accompaniment to fine cheese, it is no surprise that an artisan cheese industry is also burgeoning. Although the co-op Black River Cheese Co. has been making traditional cheese in the county since 1901, a new startup from Toronto plans to launch an artisan cheese factory in 2007.

Petra Cooper, former president of McGraw-Hill Ryerson's Canadian higher education division, is building a plant in Picton as part of an exit strategy from the Toronto rat race.

When it opens, Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Co. will sell several different types of cheeses made by hand from the milk of local goats and sheep.

Cooper hopes that Prince Edward County will one day become known for its own cheeses, as is Camembert, France.

Taylor says much of the county's good fortunes are due to timing. The economy is booming, interest rates are low and the area had a solid base of restaurants and traditional farming along with small-scale, health-oriented, organic and high-quality agriculture on which to build what Taylor calls an "agri-culinary" strategy.

"Certainly we can't take all the credit for the county's success by any means," Taylor says. "The underpinnings have been evolving and then we went out and marketed the heck out of it and are continuing to do so. And it's working."

In 2002, Prince Edward County processed $33.8 million in residential building permits - an all-time high.

"Last year, in 2004, we were $12 million over that," Taylor says. "We were up in residential, in commercial and industrial - significantly."

Last year, commercial and industrial building permits topped $5 million. In 1998 the total was $700,000.

Residential permits were at $16 million in 1998. In 2004, they hit $41.5 million.

Total building permits almost tripled over the six years, from $16.7 million to $46.5 million.

Taylor attributes many of the residential building permits to a growing trend for urbanites to relocate to the country.

"Places like Muskoka and the Kawarthas are reaching capacity and they're running out of serviced land and becoming very expensive," he says. "Prince Edward County is just being discovered as a lifestyle community, with plenty of land that is still reasonably priced."

Many of the new commercial-industrial building permits come from the wine industry, Taylor says. But much of it comes from other sectors.

More than $100 million has been invested in the county over the last few years.

Essroc Canada Inc. recently invested more than $25 million in its existing Picton cement plant. Meat processor Midtown Meats recently completed a large plant expansion, adding a new line and hiring 65 new people to its existing workforce of 165.

SierraPak, a new multimillion-dollar food-processing business, created 25 new jobs and Clearwater Designs, a large Canadian canoe and kayak manufacturer, just moved from Kingston and increased its workforce to 15 from eight.

Meanwhile, Prince Edward County is continuing to work on marketing its food and wine brand name to Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and the surrounding area so that even more people will search out an experience they can only have there.

"It's added value-oriented and consumer experience-oriented, meaning I'm not just going to have an egg - I'm going to have an egg prepared by a chef in a wonderful style," Taylor says.

"And it's going to make me come back here and consume not only our agricultural products, but use our restaurants, our spas, our overnight accommodations, our beaches and our shopping and our studios," he says.

(Frank Armstrong can be reached at armstrong@businessedge.ca)