Continuing Icellars Blog & Winter Solstice! - Shortest Day of the Year

Hello Friends,

It’s been a while since our last post. As many of you know, prior to his passing, my father Adnan wrote and maintained this blog, offering insights into his present thoughts, opinions, and to give updates about what was happening around the winery. In his spirit, we would like to continue regularly posting updates to keep you informed of all that’s happening around Icellars. As I’m sure many of you know, we’re committed to maintaining Adnan’s vision for the winery.

First, I want to introduce myself and share some background stories with my family winery;

My name is Tolga Icel, youngest son of my parents Elif & Adnan Icel. I have an older brother, Arda who shares the same passion for the winery. I am young, but what is important is that I have been here for 15+ years, over half of my life, following my fathers footsteps. Starting when I was in grade school, and still here way past graduating from University. This winery is more than just a job, and is a place where we create moments with my family and have the chance to build something great together.

My first task at Icellars started when I was just 9 years old. Although I was just a kid, my father always involved me in most operations around the winery. From learning how to maintain barrels, punchdowns, observing vineyard conditions, and much more. We planted the first set of vines together in 2010, my father taught my brother and I how to operate the first tractor we had, and took us on the trailer of it to go water all vines down each row by hand. It was such a cool and fun engaging experience to go from school on the weekdays to farming on the weekends. I always used to watch "How it's Made" show with my dad, and then do something like we see from the show at our family work was so fascinating. This winery was beyond work for us, it's a second home, where we share countless memories and live side by side. To this day I am only grateful for all the things we did together and memories we can look back to. For this, it has been a mission for me to carry on with everything just as he imagined, and elevate all to the best of my ability. 

 Some pictures from 2010:

One of other my core memories at the start was watching my father experience his first set of mistakes. Even your own father, a person who you would believe was a perfect man, makes the silliest errors, and it was hard holding back a laugh at such moments, me and my brother would stare at each other trying not to say anything. So funny to think back about it after so many years. 

In 2015 around this time of the year in December, while filtering a very low yield of a highly anticiapted Cabernet Sauvignon crop, a slight forklift adjustment tossed an entire barrel over 10 feet to the pavement. It spilled the one of two 250 Litres of Cabernet Sauvignon tanks, waiting to transfer to barrel, we had at the time and was such an intense moment. As a kid, my jaw dropped. I could ofcourse not truly understand the full meaning at that moment as much as my father did but I could see in his eyes he was far from wanting to talk about it. It was end of the day, and we we're already very tired, and the last sight before heading home was the entire cellar space covered in purple, of a wine he loved the most. As a kid, along with my brother Arda, we dared not to say a word on the drive back home. It was silent but the silence just made everything more intense. Radio at 0 volume. After dinner and some time to settle and think about it, we only laughed it off after taking some pokes at him. Haha! It was always my father showing us the ways to operations, and this time we had told him to take it easy with the machines. Still such a hilarious story to remember to this day, 10 years later. 

The stainless tank in question:

Where we sit today, me having just turned 26, and my brother 30, we’re dedicated to carrying on his legacy, and know he would be proud. We have been involved since the beginning and always progressed our set of responsibilities, but only after he is gone we truly realize how much that man valued his work and family. We also realize that Icellars would not be where it is today without all of your support, and for that, we’re eternally grateful. From our Family and the entire winemaking team, we hope you have a wonderful and merry holiday season, and a very happy New Year. We’re looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible in 2026.

Cheers to you all,

Tolga Icel

Below are some thoughts from our winemaker, Mark Williamson, on the 2025 vintage and growing season:

The Winter Solstice in Niagara is marked as the shortest day of the year. A day where we see the fewest hours of sunlight (if the sky isn’t overcast). Most lament the darkening days of December and long for warm summer evenings. However, after the solstice, day-length slowly grows with each passing week. For the team at Icellars’, it’s a time of reflection and cellar work, barreling down our wines and discussing the latest vintage.

As far as growing seasons, 2025 was an exceptional vintage in Niagara. However, losing Adnan, our founder and captain of the ship, was unimaginable only 8 months ago. The year was incredibly difficult to navigate for the team, dealing with both personal loss and the tenacity he brought to what we did at the winery. Despite everything, we know he would have been proud of the wines we made in 2025. They were true to his vision and reflect his own personal love of wine.

This year, the drought-like conditions made for very small berries, concentrated grapes with thick skins and plenty of colour. The wines are big, brooding, deeply coloured, and full of energetic tannin. While our crop was light, the wines are certainly not. In particular, our Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the wines I’m most excited for. 2025 will certainly be another page in the story of how we can make exceptional Bordeaux-style wines with our terroir. Similar in style to the 2020 vintage, these wines may perhaps be of even higher quality, only time will tell. They will require great patience in the cellar; extended time in oak to develop, and will likely need further aging in bottle to come into harmony. These are the kinds of wines Adnan loved to make and we know he would have been pleased with them.

If you decide to visit us during the winter, you’ll find the winemaking team diligently out pruning the vines. If the weather happens to be especially poor that day, we may be in the cellar topping barrels, blending, or bottling some older vintages. Personally, I love winter at Icellars. There’s always a sense of peacefulness in the vineyard and in the cellar. It’s not what first comes to mind when one imagines Niagara Wine Country, but if you do make the trip, it might become your favourite time of year to visit.