Arinna and Wiyana Wanda

Happy weekend,

As we are having the last bit of summer days as promised I will write today about the origins of the names of Arinna and Wiyana Wanda wines.

As you already know our winery is focused in late ripening red grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet Franc. You can make exceptional single varietal wines from each grape and we make these. But as the law of Synergy says "The combined power of group of elements when they are working together is greater than the total power achieved by each working separately". You can make even better wines by blending certain grapes together. The best known example of this is known as Bordeaux blends or Meritage by using above mentioned grapes. 

The simplified explanation is Cabernet Sauvignon gives structure and body, Merlot gives roundness and softness, Cabernet Franc gives fruit, Malbec colour etc. 

Icellars is making mainly two types of blends; a Cabernet Sauvignon dominant blend (typical 60-70%) with Merlot, Cab Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot making up the rest. This wine's purpose is to be powerful, full body and ageable for a long time. We also make a Merlot dominant blend from the same grapes to offer a smoother and more approachable wine. Instead of putting generic names as Meritage, Red etc. we opted to use proprietary names like Wiyana Wanda and Arinna which are both rooted from an ancient civilization "The Hittites".    

I will not go deep in wine history but as we know Wine and Beer was invented about 8,000 years ago in the Fertile Triangle which is roughly located around Mesopotamia region. The Hittites lived around 1500 BC in Central Anatolia. These guys did not invent but excelled in winemaking and they were the biggest producers and exporters of wine in their era. For this reason in trheir own language which is today considered the oldest Indo-European language they called their country "Wiyana Wanda" . Wiyana means wine and Wanda means land/country so the called their country as "The Land of Wine" Later the Wiyana word entered the Greek as Oeno and Latin as Vinum. Please note wine was not known in Europe at Hittites times.

They also had a Sun Goddes named "Arinna". She was considered to be the chief deity. I was born in the heart of this civilization's lands. We decided to put these two terms to our Bordeaux sytle blends to connect our roots to what we do today. 

Our deer logo is also inspired from a Hitite King's wine drinking cup.

Enjoy the last bit of summer and I and my family would like to host you at our vineyard. 

Best wishes.

Adnan Icel
Owner&Winemaker