From the moment he purchased the land and docked his self-built sailboat on its shores John Rossignol has worked relentlessly to make his dreams and ambitions become a beautiful and bountiful reality. You can taste his success, see it, smell it, touch and even hear it at his bustling Rossignol Estate Winery in Prince Edward Island, Canada. After building house, barn and workshop on the shores of h
is estate in Little Sands John decided his wine-making hobby had garnered enough kudos and become enough of a passion to warrant building not just a winery but founding and fostering a wine industry in Canada's smallest province. He began to plant vines, build the winery infrastructure and work with government to draft and write legislature governing the making and selling of wine in Prince Edward Island. He firmly believes in buying local whenever possible, purchasing any grapes he doesn't grow himself from other Island vineyards that have sprung up due to his example. He uses local honey and maple sugar and works with PEI growers to develop and make his delicious and unique fruit wines and liqueurs.Having a steady market for their products is beneficial to the Island economy. The young people of the neighborhood work summers in the vineyards and occasionally bottle wine in the winter; others benefit from his employment in marketing, promotion and the arts. All of the labels are derived from paintings by local artists, many by his wife oncologist Dr. Dagny Dryer Rossignol. Her work is also available for purchase in the winery gift shop which is home to wine tasting and the starting point of winery tours. John's transformation of the property int Little Sands from an abandoned farm to an ever-growing and evolving estate winery has been an ongoing success story - one that many in Canada and around the world can now attest to. Successful Island vintner John Rossignol notes that most wine makers today go to university to learn their trade. Rossignol, whose involvement with wine was once limited to enjoying the odd glass of red with pizza, simply did a little reading to transform his scenic Little Sands property into the Island’s first commercial winery almost two decades ago.
“I just did the old fashion thing — ordered a couple books and read up on the subject,’’ he said matter-of-factly. Rossignol, a distinguished looking 63-year-old with a neatly trimmed white beard, has grown Rossignol Winery into a business that produces about 40,000 bottles of wine a year and employs roughly 12 employees at peak operation. His wines, made from six cold climate varieties of grapes grown over 10 acres of his own property and from fruits like strawberries, apples, blueberries and raspberries grown by local farmers, are certainly passing the tasty test. Blackberry Mead, Rossignol’s signature wine that “started as an experiment’’, has captured a gold medal five years straight at the All Canadian Wine Championships. Rossignol needed to wait for approval from the province to start a winery while also dismissing the many skeptical comments from people who felt a business rooted in growing grapes on P.E.I. would not fly. There was plenty of start-up infrastructure and hefty capital cost to get the winery off the ground as well. Rossignol first needed to plant a vineyard. Building his winery followed. Rossignol then made his first two vintages. It took four years before he was selling his first bottles of wine.
“It worked out well,’’ he said.
“All along, though, it’s been something that I viewed as a challenge.’’
Rossignol, who could be mistaken for the Island’s Bearded Skipper Norman Peters at a quick glance, is a man who has demonstrated a life-long thirst for adventure.
“I started adventuring on my own,’’ he said.
“So I was sort of a loner who would, as a 12-year-old, go off on a bicycle 30 miles down and stay over night on my own.’’
One of four children growing up in Sarnia, the largest city on Lake Huron, Rossignol also started sailing at age 12. He paid for his junior membership in the Sarnia Yacht Club by painting docks. He left school at 16 when the family moved to Toronto after he found “the whole change of environment didn’t suit me.’’
Like his father Adrien, Rossignol turned to a trade in refrigeration. He worked with dad part-time on and off before eventually working with a contractor who did industrial-type refrigeration in everything from meat packing plants to mines. His apprenticeship work took him to a shipyard in Quebec City. At 17, no coaxing was needed for him to accept a job on a boat that would spend three months at a time at sea loading up yellow-fin tuna netted in the South Pacific.
“So I went from being a refrigeration apprentice to an onboard fisherman,’’ he said.
“I rather enjoyed it. I liked being at sea...I found it very calming, just very pleasant.’’
He landed another job salmon fishing in a remote coast of British Columbia marveling at orca whales swimming alongside the ship and taking in the splendor of bears standing tall along the shoreline. While his two fishing stints presented plenty of adventure, he didn’t net much money with either venture. With the economy picking up, Rossignol returned to Toronto where more large refrigeration projects were cropping up. He finished his apprenticeship, worked for a contractor for a few years then started his own industrial refrigeration business. He ran a successful business for eight years with the bulk of contracts coming in food plants but also with work in ice rinks. His first wife Lyn, who died in 2000 after a lengthy battle with cancer, ran the office and later helped Rossignol build the winery business.
“We worked as a team,’’ he said fondly of his late wife with whom he raised three children. All of the children — Dana Kaleta, Lori Rossignol and Marc — have their own careers and are not involved in dad’s winery business. Rossignol says all the heavy traffic as he went from one job site to the next around Toronto had him looking to P.E.I. as a more relaxing setting to settle in. Driving to the Island, however, would not be interesting enough for this seafarer. Instead, he loaded the family onto the 40-foot sailboat that he built in his backyard in Toronto in the early 70s — a boat he went on to sail through the Great Lakes many times and to Bermuda — for the move. Just like the settlers of yore, Rossignol proceeded to build a house and a workshop. He added a horse and some chickens to the mix. Today, he lives in Little Sands with his second wife Dr. Dagny Dryer, an oncologist who also happens to be a talented painter. Some of her work adorns labels on Rossignol wine bottles. Rossignol, who counts cats, a golden retriever and a Clydesdale named Leiti among his pets, still manages to find adventures away from his winery. Last year, for instance, he peddled his bicycle tip to tip across Prince Edward Island. Five times. Three years ago, he circumnavigated the Island in his kayak. The three-month trip, he says with a smile, proved an interesting experiment in human relations for the man who keeps in shape in the winter by cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. On several occasions, Rossignol, who would average 30 kilometres of paddling a day, entrusted total strangers to meet him at the end of the day with his pick-up truck.
“And every single time they showed up...I never lost a truck and I never got stranded,’’ he said.
“The news is full of stories about people having hard times and this was just like good news all the way.’’
Rossignol doesn’t only show considerable faith in his fellow man he demonstrates plenty of compassion towards people as well. He has been a strong supporter of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital over the years and in 2010 started a fundraiser called Feast for Kings that raised $15,000 for Kings County Hospital with a second planned for later this year. Rossignol has also made a point of supporting Kingswood Centre, a place that provides training and day support services to individuals with an intellectual disability.
“It’s a very worthwhile project that is not very well known,’’ he said. Rossignol says he feels fortunate to be living in such a beautiful, quiet place as Little Sands, P.E.I. He notes a big part of the appeal behind starting a winery was being able to operate a business from his home and putting the brakes to his years of fighting traffic in a far more hectic work environment.
“Now it’s become more of a lifestyle and I still like doing it,’’ he said of operating a winery in his expansive front yard.
“It’s the type of thing I can carry on for a few more years.’’
