Quebec vintner turns tomatoes into wine using secret family recipe

BAIE-SAINT-PAUL, Canada (AFP) - Canadian wine lovers have been raising a glass to an increasingly popular but unusual vintage crafted from a secret Belgian family recipe four generations old using... tomatoes.

Mr Pascal Miche, a former pork butcher in his 40s, says his is the first tomato wine to be successfully commercialised - with sales at 34,000 bottles annually only three years since he launched the project.

"I wanted to finish what my great-grandfather had started" in the 1930s, he told AFP as he inspected his crop of 6,200 heirloom tomato plants on his "vineyard" in Charlevoix, about 400km north-east of Montreal in the picturesque north shore region of the Saint Lawrence river.

Mr Miche immigrated to Quebec province from Belgium seven years ago.