About the Store

Greetings, and welcome to The Cellar!! We are aiming to be one of Calgary’s (and therefore Canada’s) best wine stores. How do we manage this? Easy -- through a great location, store, selection, and attitude.

Location: #100, 137 - 8th Avenue S.W. We begin with a superior location -- right downtown so that anyone working or shopping in central Calgary can stop by for a visit and check out our selection. (And if you buy more than a few bottles, we’ll even deliver them to your house.)

To go along with the idea of a good wine ageing properly, we have built our store in one of Calgary’s oldest buildings, The Alberta Hotel, which was erected in the late 1880s. This magnificent old building was the pride of the city until prohibition forced it to close its doors. The building has been renovated to its former glory, and we must admit that we take a bit of perverse pleasure in selling alcoholic beverages in the cellar of a place closed by teatotallers.

Our Store: One of the things on which we pride ourselves most is the aesthetics of our store. The location is downstairs, so it even feels like a cellar, and the open, friendly space invites you to wander around without the fear of knocking over any expensive bottles of wine.

Our Selection: Wow, where to begin? We have a fantastic array of wares, ranging from the very affordable to the highly exclusive. And this applies not only to the wines themselves, but to the impressive collection of wine accessories that we carry (decanters, corkscrews, glasses, etc.).

While it’s impossible to try wines before buying them, we have done the work for you ahead of time. We have researched each one of the wines on our shelves and ensured that it has a minimum level of quality. And if we couldn’t find a rating, we tried the wine ourselves to make sure that it is a product we can stand behind and affirm its merit.

As an added bonus, we have added taster’s notes for each of our wines so you know even better what to expect from the wine (for example, if it’s spicy or mellow, a sipping wine or one that goes well with food).

Our Attitude: Welcome to a wine store that is firmly opposed to wine snobbery. We take great satisfaction in arranging our wines without any regard about cost, with a $10 bottle often sitting beside a $50+ bottle. We’re interested in good wines, not high prices, and our knowledgeable staff delights in helping you find the perfect bottle in your price range.

A Family Business

You are probably already well familiar with the elegantly cozy depths of The Cellar, but do you know about the family who created it? David Neill, with the support of his family (late wife Nicole, brother Alec, son Brian, and daughter Sandra) has been spearheading the revitalization of Stephen Avenue since 1997. Projects have include the Alberta Hotel Building restoration, the Cellar, Murrieta's Westcost Grill, and the restoration of the Clarence Block which is the home of McNally Robinson Booksellers.

The credo of the Neills' company, Encorp Inc., is " creating, enhancing, and sustaining timeless places". With the launch this fall of Art Central, it appears that they will add another jewel to downtown Calgary. Art Central is located at the Northwest corner of Centre Street and Seventh Avenue SW. The building is currently being renovated to house 40 spaces for artists studios, galleries, and other art related retail and services. Murrieta's Restaurant group will develop two restarants within art Central, The Palette Coffehouse and The Siding Café.

For David Neill and his family, developing downtown properties is a passion akin to the passion ofr good art or a great bottle of wine. In purchasing a building, the Neills consider what would be the ideal use for each space. It is hard to imagine how a rundown open courtyard inhabited only by pigeons in the Alberta Hotel Building became Murrieta's, one of Calgary's most distinguished eateries. In the basement, by exposing the old sandstone and brick a beautiful wine cellar emerged. Truly, the Neills display a knack for peeling back the layers of time and revealing the timeless beauty underneath.



Art is also a passion and lifestyle for the Neills. It was only a matter of time before a building became available in which the Neills could create a real impact for the visual arts in the city. It is the hope of the Neills to create an environment that nurtures the production and sale of fine art, and makes people more familiar with art. The concept of bringing working artist studios into a commercial building will encourage visitors to understand and appreciate the process of art.

The Neills continue to push the city forward. It is a vital task to create a downtown that really works, where commerce, entertainment, shopping and dining blend in an eclectic environment that embraces the future and reveres it's past. The inspiration and energy of David Neill and his family will help ensure the vitality of downtown Calgary for years to come. So David, what's your next project? - R.M.