How we started Icellars- Part 2

Happy Canada Day,

Today is Part 2 of how we got into wine business. The movie Bottle Shock is free to watch on Amazon Prime. I met personally the main character of the movie Mr. Steven Spurrier (impersonated by Alan Rickman) in 2019 in London, UK. He tasted 7 of our wines and we chatted for a good 15 minutes. Being the person who has changed the world of wine forever, he was such a humble gentleman. RIP Steve.

Now back to September 2010, we had a 60 acres empty land and no knowledge but a lot of excitement for the future of family.

I went to the N.O.T.L. library to learn about the past of our new corner of the world. Some early inhabitants were the Neutral Native community of Onyahrah. These skilled flint napers and farmers preserved their neutrality by maintaining a military and political balance between the Huron and Iroquois Confederacies until 1652 when they were annihilated by the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy.

In 1775, a trading post was established by European settlers at S. David’s Creek Rd&York Rd which was the most important intersection of the two major trails connecting Great Lakes region. In 1781, the Niagara Peninsula was purchased by the British from the Mississauga First Nations for  300 suits of clothing (how unjustified).

In 1796, Lot 100 (our parcel)  was granted to Loyalist Adam Crysler. The land had stayed in Crysler family hands until 1931.

When I looked to the historical aerial pictures of the land on Google Earth, it was an orchard in most of the 20th century until 1973. When I discovered millions of peach cores in the soil it was clear this was a Peach orchard.

After a little historical research, the first thing we did for the land was to hire a vineyard consultant named Ryan Brewster. He took 120 soil samples from each of our acres at two different depths so we could understand what we had in our hands. About one third of our land was a very rare (in NOTL) iron rich Trafalgar reddish hued silty clay loam over Queenston shale bedrock. The remaining two thirds were Jeddo mainly reddish clay loam till with higher clay portion.

As I was spending more time to get to know the land one day I met John, the old farmer neighbour on west of us who was farming soybeans on his 80 acres. He told me that he used to have a vineyard on his land but uprooted it in the 80s. I asked him why? His reply was monumental on my planting decisions; in summers, it was getting so hot on his land his grapes were ripening so early with lots of sugar, the winery who was selling his grapes were not yet open to receive his grapes. After this conversation I installed two weather stations on the first two blocks of our future vineyard so I could record daily high and low temparatures from which you could calculate your Growing Degree Days which essentially hints you which grape varieties are  more suitable.

To be continued.