After what seems like an eternity in the making, Southbrook Vineyards is now open for business and it's incredibly impressive.

Designer Jack Diamond believes a well-designed building should not reveal itself all at once, but instead, offer a series of discovery and heightened sense of anticipation - and it does.

It's an intriguing drive up the driveway, the wall on one side, the vineyard on the other, past a beautifully still reflecting pond, across the bio-swail and to the parking lot. Leave your car and walk towards the only break in the wall, which serves as the front door into a building that brings your eyes right back outside into the facing vineyard - amazing. You see, beyond the massive mile of wall is a glass building. It's a magical sort of trickery to walk into a building only to feel you are outdoors, like walking through a looking glass.

To the left is the beautiful tasting room which keeps with the horizontal theme by sinking long narrow cubicles into the wall. These are filled with bottles of wine all dressed in the new Southbrook labels and mysteriously backlit.

The sleek tasting room offers flights of fine Southbrook table wines and fruit wines. At the west end is a pizza bar where customers can get a grilled individual pizza and glass of wine for a reasonable $15.

To the right of the front door is a demonstration kitchen and wine library that is also built into long sunken cubicles that stretch down the wall. In the library is a history of Southbrook wine that begins in 1991 when Southbrook first began in their Richmond Hill location. The demonstration is waiting to showcase local foods from Niagara's top chefs.

Outside, the environmentally friendly property treats all of the runoff and waste water so the water flowing into Niagara-on-the-Lake's municipal water system is clean enough to drink. "Everything that leaves this property is good enough to drink" boasts a proud Elena Galeyl-Pride, director of customer experience.

Southbrook will achieve its LEED certification (Leaders in Energy and Environmental Design) later this year and it's vineyard organic certification is expected in September.

Diamond has created a vinous masterpiece with the new Southbrook building while winemaker Ann Sperling never fails to create a vinous masterpiece with each sip of Southbrook fine wines.