ONES didn’t start in a boardroom. It started in an Okanagan living room. A place where friends meet, toasts are made & moments are shared. Like the one that would ultimately lead to friends Chris & Tyler creating Canada’s 1st Non-Alc Winery…
In Chris’ living room in 2021, Tyler shared his good news: he was about to be a Dad.
It’s the kind of life-changing moment that causes people to take a good long look at what’s important to them. At the top of that list for both Chris & Tyler, as fathers—was their health. Something that their passion for wine didn’t always support. It seemed like they only had two options: continue to drink alcoholic wine or settle for non-alc options pumped full of sugar. Rather than accept this, they decided to try what no one else in Canada had done before:
Create a sugar-free non-alcoholic wine.
The goal was straightforward but difficult: make real wine first, then remove the alcohol without stripping away what made it good. That meant starting with high-quality grapes, fermenting properly, and using a gentle alcohol-removal process that didn’t require adding sugar or flavour back in afterward.
Thanks to the Okanagan’s incredible pocket desert grapes, ONES had the perfect starting point right in their own backyard. The next step was to properly ferment the grapes to create real wine. This decision would lead to better flavours than the conventional practice of using vinegar as a base—but would add more steps and time to the process. They’d have to remove the alcohol. Choosing to remove the alcohol with reverse osmosis meant their wines would take up to 3 times longer to make than other non-alcs. But all of this wasn’t even a real choice. The quality of the wine they wanted to make was too important to take shortcuts with.
And finally: the commitment to be a 100% zero-sugar non-alc wine. A distinction so uncommon they ended up creating the very 1st zero-sugar non-alc wines in Canada.
Because no one else was doing it the hard way, ONES succeeded in making a non-alc wine that was noticeably different from the rest. And wow, did people notice. ONES had launched quietly, softly, in October 2022—with just 42 orders. Fast-forward to today—where more than 400,000+ bottles have made their way to tables all across Canada & the U.S.
First came the customers who were surprised that a non-alcoholic wine could actually taste like wine. Then, repeat orders. Then, conversations with provincial buyers. ONES eventually found its way onto shelves with the SAQ in Quebec—where it sold out shortly after launching—and later into the LCBO in Ontario. All of which led them to what happened next…
When Chris & Tyler stepped onto the Dragons’ Den stage it almost felt like that moment 4 years earlier when two friends shared a bottle of non-alc wine. Once again, a common vision for a non-alc wine crafted with true integrity was shared. This time between Chris, Tyler & one of the dragons…
Watch the Dragons’ Den episode below to see which dragon made ONES an offer!
Manjit Minhas—a titan in Canada’s beverage industry—was blown away by what ONES had accomplished & recognized the power of their relentless commitment to choosing quality at every step of the journey. A combination that led to an offer and a handshake…
And this is just the beginning.
To celebrate this milestone, you can get a limited time Dragons’ Den Wine Pack from ONES.
Limited time offer.
Limited time offer.