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Wine might seem like a thin topic for a Canadian-based magazine. But a group of investors, including TV host Evan Solomon and singer Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies, is hoping the vine will be their ticket to ride in the lifestyle publishing boomlet.

The pair are helping to broaden the appeal of the four-year-old, Niagara-based wine journal Vines, investing capital to fund a redesign aimed at a broader base of well-to-do consumers.

"We want to be a lifestyle magazine because we see that wine itself is a lifestyle choice," says Mr. Page, who also writes an irreverent column for the magazine called Steven's Page. "The average person is a lot more wine-savvy than they were five years ago. I think it's just seeped into the culture in a certain way."

Walter Sendzik, the magazine's editor and publisher, says it was a question of expanding beyond the finer points of pinot noir and gewurztraminer and addressing "the culture that surrounds the wine."

Last year, he met with RealizeMedia,a consulting firm run by Andrew Heintzman and Mr. Solomon, the founders of Shift magazine, to discuss a way of expanding Vines' scope. Also in on the talks was Mr. Page, an avowed oenophile. They workshopped ideas and hired Toronto's award-winning Concrete Design Communications to mint a new look.

Mr. Solomon -- who hosts the CBC's Hot Type literary show -- Mr. Heintzman and Mr. Page took such an interest that they became partners in Vines, which relaunched this month. (RealizeMedia and Mr. Page each have a 25-per-cent stake; Mr. Sendzik retains 50 per cent.)

Mr. Sendzik became a wine connoisseur while studying Canadian history at McGill University in Montreal, where he often attended "wine and cheese" parties. After editing stints at urban Ontario weeklies in St. Catharines and Kitchener, Mr. Sendzik founded Vines in 1998.

The redesign gives the magazine a glossier appearance but also affirms Vines as more than a stodgy wine bible. With CD reviews, articles on cheese and an advertisement for the Subaru Forester on the back cover, Vines is courting a wider audience.

In an attempt to expand readership or to refocus on a subject that has fallen out of fashion, some niche publications will move into the lifestyle market.

The most obvious case is Cigar Aficionado, published by New York-based M. Shanken Communications. The magazine was launched as a quarterly in 1992, at the outset of the cigar revival; the cover of each issue featured a different celebrity brandishing a smouldering stogie. By 1997, ad sales were so robust that publisher Marvin Shanken began printing it six times a year, with a circulation of 384,000.

In 2000, seeing the cigar craze on the wane, Mr. Shanken recast Cigar Aficionado as a lifestyle magazine, with stories on sports and gambling. The "Cigar" part of the title, once so prominent, is now dwarfed by the larger typeface of "Aficionado." The publication experienced a drop in circulation soon after its transition, something executive editor Gordon Mott attributes to the U.S. recession. He says that since then, subscriptions have risen steadily to 200,000.

Mr. Page and Mr. Sendzik contend that wine is a less "trendy" subject than cigars, but they also feel a wider editorial scope will help them compete against more focused titles such as Canada's Wine Access, U.S. magazine Wine Spectator (also published by Shanken Communications) and Britain's Decanter. Mr. Sendzik says Vines traditionally has skewed toward a younger audience who may not be as knowledgeable about wine.

At 72 pages, the magazine's November issue is its biggest. When Mr. Sendzik started Vines, the initial print run was 5,000 copies. He now has that many subscribers, and he bumped the print run to 20,000 from 15,000 in anticipation of a burgeoning readership. (Niche magazines vary in circulation: Canadian Geographic, for example, prints 237,100 an issue; Pacific Yachting prints 13,500.)

Gary Garland, president of Magazines Canada, a non-profit agency that offers marketing support to the industry, says appealing to a broader readership is a tricky endeavour. "If one tries to go too generalist, one starts to open one's competitive flanks, and you then have a lot more that you need to protect yourself from. You have that many more competitors that can take advertising dollars away from you. But if you do your core job absolutely well and better than anybody else, it's fair ball."

Mr. Garland points to publications such as Canadian House and Home, and Style at Home -- so-called "shelter" magazines -- as examples of niche periodicals that have expanded sensibly and successfully. In addition to articles on furniture and decorating, they also feature recipes and wine reviews. Style at Home editor Gail Johnston Habs says it's not so much a concerted effort to diversify as evidence of wider trends. "These days, shelter magazines tend to encompass more than strictly buying new furniture and how to paint your home," she says. "There's more a lifestyle, a love-of-home approach."

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Canadian magazines in the "homes" category have enjoyed a 19-per-cent rise in average paid circulation and a 13-per-cent rise in subscriptions since 1997.