(FinancialPost) - The Niagara peninsula, a flat strip of lush farmland that separates Lake Erie from Lake Ontario, feels like the Klondike right now, with eager farmers ripping out stately orchards of pear and peach trees to plant row upon row of grape vines on every possible scrap of soil.

Someday soon, the farmers may ring the doorbells in the little subdivision that crowds the fields in the village of Virgil, to ask permission to grow a few grape vines in their front yards.

In a field at PondView Estates Winery, Abe Wiens, who runs Vinetech Canada, pulls bundles of cabernet franc grape vine rootstock from a bin of water and hands them to two workers — dressed like bank robbers with sunglasses and bandanas against the dust — on a vine planting machine.

“We are planting cabernet franc for icewine production,” explains Luciano Puglisi, the owner of PondView. These vines will bear harvestable grapes in three years and business will still be booming, since well-heeled Chinese consumers have developed a prodigious thirst for Canada’s icewine in recent years.