Our wines started to get more attention by the release of warm 2016 vintage reds. Wine critic Michael Pinkus is a hard to please writer. He scores wines out of a 5 star scale. He does't mind giving a 3 star to a $100 wine if he does not like. He tastes thousands of wines around the world in a year and he rarely gives 5 stars to a wine. Out of all the wine critics I have met so far, I trust Michael's reviews the most as he is not involved monetarily with wineries.
Michael gave only two full 5 stars in the last six years (out of maybe 10,000 wines he tasted) and I got both 5 stars for our 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon and 2016 Wiyana Wanda. This was quite an honour for a start up winery.
One winter day in 2018, a man came to the winery to taste our wines. He did not say who he was but said he was from New York City and heard about our wines at Treadwell and a few other wineries he had been. A few months later I was informed by someone he was a writer at Conde Nast Travel Magazine with millions of readers and he was at a mission to write an article about Niagara wines. He wrote;
...Adnan Icel, originally an engineer, has a tasting room that doesn’t really look like a tasting room. He's also making Niagara wine that isn’t like other Niagara wine. The space feels industrial in a way that will feel familiar to craft beer fanatics who sample IPAs surrounded by steel tanks. The only indication this is anything besides the place where Icel ages and ships his wine are two long tables and a leather couch.
The setting makes you feel like you’re part of the process. It also makes you think this is a winery that plunges all its energy into making good wine. Like many of his peers, Icel makes a quality Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc, but the one you’ll come back for is his Cabernet Sauvignon. If you want to prove to any doubters that Canada makes good red wine, this is what you will pour them. Icel uses the Canadian cold to his advantage, waiting to pick his cab grapes until after the first snow. The result is a surprisingly fresh Cabernet that pops in your mouth in a way many just don’t. If you show up early in the day you’ll get the undivided attention of Simba, the always-present golden retriever and unofficial head of customer satisfaction. He’ll curl up at your feet until you finish your flight...
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