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It wasn't the first thing I expected from Jason Priestley on the subject of Niagara.

"I'm staggered by the beauty of this place," the Vancouver-born actor said as I dim-wittedly asked him, red-carpet-reporter-style, for impressions during the Niagara Wine Weekend & Auction on Saturday. "Niagara-on-the-Lake is such a beautiful little town. And, over all, it's a beautiful part of the world."

Mr. Priestley, in the region for the first time to shoot a segment of Hollywood & Vines, a TV series about food and wine he co-hosts with broadcaster and actor Terry David Mulligan, is no stranger to beautiful scenery. A resident of California since his days on Beverly Hills 90210, the wine lover regularly tours such places as Napa Valley and the Okanagan Valley, where he is part-owner of a boutique winery called Black Hills Estate.

Niagara, staggering? And not the Falls part? If you say so, Brandon.

Mr. Priestley, a collector with 3,800 bottles, also was "awestruck" by the size of Niagara's wine industry, keenly identifying two of its most compelling cool-climate red varieties.

"I've been really impressed with the cab francs that are growing here," he said, looking appropriately like a leading man on hiatus with a scruffy beard, light checkered shirt, faded blue jeans and Nike running shoes. "I really love the baco noir, which seems to be an Ontario-only thing."

Those kinds of discoveries could be heard all around the afternoon garden-party portion of the three-day event, a charity blowout attended by about 1,000 people who paid $1,000 a ticket to graze, sip, be entertained and walk on a red carpet lined with photographers from such media outlets as ET Canada, E! News Weekend, eTalk and, not least, Cogeco Cable! (That last exclamation mark was mine.)Centred on a hangar-sized white tent in a big park on the outskirts of this postcard-worthy old town, it raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Toronto-based SickKids Foundation and Niagara's St. Catharines General Hospital. The final tally isn't expected for weeks because, one assumes, the organizers are more accustomed to weighing grapes than counting beans.

Most remarkable, $100,000 of that total came by way of a single, jaw-dropping pledge during the gala dinner from singer and host Jann Arden, whose generosity, I might add, extended to her unwittingly allowing me to use her trailer to change into my tux. (Thanks, Jann, the organizers said I could.)

But epiphanies such as Mr. Priestley's, rather than mere charity, are the main point behind the two-year-old event. "I'll tell you, our target market was the Rosedale crowd," said Norm Beal, chairman of the Wine Council of Ontario and president and chief executive officer of Peninsula Ridge Estates Winery in Beamsville, referring to Toronto's old-money neighbourhood. "One of the reasons we partnered with SickKids is because we know that they're very well-connected with those people. And what we need to do in the Niagara wine industry is get our wines in that demographic. A lot of these folks still remember Niagara wines from 30 years ago."

Though it's impossible to say what proportion of attendees came from beyond Niagara, Mr. Beal believes after some creative sleuthing that his mission was largely accomplished this year.

"If you look at the silent-auction tables, last year it was mainly 905," he said, referring to the area code that includes parts of Niagara and was displayed on bidding sheets next to the bidders' names. "And if you go to the silent-auction tables now, there's mainly 416 numbers there," he added, referring to Toronto's area code. "So I think we've made that transformation this year."

Modelled after a 28-year-old event in Napa Valley that sees wineries and other sponsors donating wine, fancy trips and dinners, the auction project was spearheaded by John Peller, president and CEO of Andrew Peller Ltd., along with Paul Speck, co-owner of Henry of Pelham, and Mr. Beal. "We know we're going from crawl to walk, not walk to run," Mr. Peller told me at the garden party. "I think you can sense that there's a confidence."

Not that he or anyone else was under the illusion that Niagara could compete with Napa, whose marquee attractions earlier this month featured an open-air lunch at Francis Ford Coppola's swanky vineyard estate and appearances by Jay Leno and superstar chef Thomas Keller as well as an obscenely rich attendance list that included Oprah Winfrey.

But one had to be impressed, in a relative way, by Saturday's festivities here, which featured a compelling performance in the evening by the Pointer Sisters. (Note to skeptics: They've still got it going on.) It also included some high-altitude auction action, such as a $28,000 winning bid for a package that included a trip for four to see Dan Aykroyd perform his Blues Brothers act with Jim Belushi in Houston as well as dinner for 10 with Mr. Aykroyd at EastDell Estates, a Niagara winery in which he owns an interest.

As with the Napa event, though, the focal point was the barrel auction, which permitted people to taste and bid on yet-to-be-bottled cases of wine still aging in cellars.

Among the top bids was $1,000 for 12 bottles of Thirty Bench 2007 Benchmark Red, or $83.33 a bottle. (The 2005 vintage sold at the winery for $60 a bottle.)

At historic barrel auctions such as the one at the famed Hospices de Beaune in Burgundy, high bids have come to play an influential role in setting price levels for wines from a new harvest. That's not the case, at least not yet, with the Niagara auction. Rather, some winemakers believe the point here is to send a message about craftsmanship.

"People will understand we are serious winemakers," said J-L Groux of Stratus Vineyards, who added that memories of the sweet, industrial plonk of decades ago still linger in the minds of some. "We make wine in barrels. There are still many people to convince out there that the seventies wines are over for us."

Ironically, on that score, the Niagara industry has some catching up to do with the younger wine-growing regions of British Columbia.

"People in British Columbia are passionate about wine from B.C.," said Harald Thiel, owner of Hidden Bench winery, a new boutique producer in Beamsville. "There are just too many restaurants in Ontario that don't promote Ontario wines and, I'm going to be honest, it's because sometimes the quality is not there. Let's not fool ourselves. Fortunately, in British Columbia they're always very proud to serve a B.C. wine. We have to get what I call the influencers, the early adopters, to use a marketing term, to start promoting Ontario wines."

Not that Mr. Thiel has had much trouble personally in reaching that objective. In his winery's first year of operation, it finished runner-up to British Columbia's long-established Mission Hill as "winery of the year" at the Canadian Wine Awards, managing also to sell out most of his first wines to knowing beverage managers at such Toronto establishments as Globe Bistro and Scaramouche restaurant.