Fort Wine Co.: Langley firm has high hopes after breaking into Chinese Market.

Chinese New Year will never taste the same again to residents of four large Chinese cities, thanks to Fort Langley's Wade Bauck.

The Fort Wine Co. which Bauck runs and co-owns, has shipped its award-winning fruit wines to Beijing, Tianjin and Hong Kong in time for Wednesday's festivities marking the Chinese New Year.

Residents of the cities will get a chance to sample The Fort Wine's Cranberry, Blackberry, Blueberry and fortified wines.

"It's an explodiing economy and there's an emerging middle class with purchasing power," says Bauck, 45.

"Our importer did quite a bit of market research and testing before he committed to the first shipment and the reception was fantastic. If we can position ourselves as a high-end product we'll be able to make inroads."

The Chinese launch is a bold step for a winery that began life as a bid to save the family farm.

In 1998, Bauck and his wife bought 17 acres in the Glen Valley, next to the cranberry bog he and his brother had operated.

They sank about $1 million into acquiring the property, renovating a house, and developing five acres of cranberry beds.

But the fates chose to test the Bauck's mettle by abruptly arranging a cranberry price collapse.

The price of the tart berry plunged to 10 cents US a pound from 60 cents in the first half of 1999, putting the family in a jam, so to speak.

They had more debt than Bauck could service with the cash flow from his cranberry crop.

"We were racking our brains about what we could do value-added that would work in the long run," Bauck says.

"We came up with idea of starting a winery."

The Baucks found a partner and stuck their necks out even farther, investing another $1 million into firing up the company.

They soon bought that partner out, and found another, B.C. Chartered Accountant and investor David Gandossi, who brought some much-needed business skills to the operation.

"One of the biggest reasons small businesses fail is a thing called founder-itis: that is when a company's founder needs assistance to take the company to the next level, but because of ego won't do it," Bauck says. "We recognized at the right time in the growth curve that to move forward it was important to attract someone with more expertise."

Bauck's readiness to seek outside help may have been eased by his non-business background.

He works full-time as a tugboat skipper for Washington Marine Group's Seaspan unit when he's not growing cranberries or running the winery.

Bauck insists there is no overlap between the fruit wine business and the seafaring skills he has learned during 28 years with Seaspan.

"There are probably not too many accountant-business people comfortable going through Active Pass at 3 a.m. on a 3,000 horse-power tug," he says.

"Conversely, there aren't too many tugboat captains who would be comfortable navigating around a balance sheet".

Still, as a guy used to handling heavy seas, Bauck was able to weather the head-winds that have come his company's way.

The Fort Wine Co. turned the corner into profitability in 2004.

For the year ended September 2004, the 10 employee, privately held company generated about $800,000 in sales.

Bauck hopes to hit $1 million in sales this year and would eventually like to see the winery reach $15 million to $20 million.

Most of the fruit for the winery's dozen products is grown in the Fraser Valley. The company expects to produce 15,000 to 20,000 cases this year.

Most of that will be sold in B.C. - and much of that will change hands at its retail outlet on site in Fort Langley.

Besides its exports to Japan and China, the winery hopes to enter the other western provinces by this summer.

B.C.'s fruit wine industry has left infancy behind to stand on its own two feet but it remains a niche player in the sector.

Bauck estimates the province has a half-dozen fruit wineries accounting for less than 1% of B.C.'s total wine sales.

Fruit wine is far more finicky to make than grape wine, says Jim Warren, an Ontario winemaker and college instructor regarded as one of Canada's fruit wine experts.

Non-grape fruit has low sugar levels and, in some cases, extremely high acid levels, forcing fruit wine makers to manipulate their product by adding sugar, water, or apple juice, Warren says.

The end result, however, is a product with a full range of sweetness that can be quaffed with a variety of foods, he says.

The Fort Wine Co., whose winemaker is currently doing test batches of kiwi wine made from Aldergrove kiwis, has long since mastered the production side of fruit wine.

Market presence, be it in China or Alberta, has become the company's new frontier, Bauck says.

"We're just scratching the surface of the market," he says.

"We're just a little sprout coming out of the ground that has the potential to grow into a big elm tree some day."