‘Ones is for everyone’: Okanagan winemakers partner up to make dealcoholized wine

The Okanagan Valley is home to Canada’s only dealcoholized wine made from BC grapes.

Ones, produced in Summerland, is owned by winemakers Tyler Harlton and Chris Pagliocchini, who launched the business in the fall of 2022.

“We’re not a very old company, but we’ve grown quite quickly,” Pagliocchini says.

The two met while working in the cellar at Dirty Laundry Vineyard about a dozen years ago, and they stayed in touch when Harlton went on to open TH Wines in 2011.

Shortly before the pandemic, Harlton decided to wind down that winery, and when he stopped making traditional wine, he stopped drinking alcohol.

“He was still interested in pairing food and wine, so he wanted a non-alcoholic option that wasn’t really sweet and didn’t have a ton of preservatives,” Pagliocchini explains.

“He went to find that in the market and it didn’t exist.”

That’s when Harlton approached Pagliocchini with the idea to make non-alcoholic wine together.

“The process is the exact same as traditional wine, except for the very last step before it goes into the bottle,” Pagliocchini says.

To make Ones wine, the fruit is harvested at the optimum time, fermented in a tank, aged in a barrel, and then filtered to remove the alcohol.

“Some other non-alc wines will add a bunch of sugar or other weird things," Pagliocchini explains.

"With our product, we want premium grapes, we want flavours, we want everything a traditional winemaker would, just without the alcohol."

The Ones wine collection features bottles of Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir, Sparkling Rosé and Sparkling Red, all of which have less than 1% alcohol.

Harlton and Pagliocchini have also recently launched cans of Sparkling Rosé and Sparkling Red with 0.5% alcohol.

“This is as close as you can get to alcoholic wine without the alcohol," Pagliocchini adds.

“Ones is for everyone.”

The dealcoholized wine is available online, as well as in some liquor stores, grocery stores and restaurants in BC, Alberta and Manitoba. Ones cans can be shipped Canada-wide.

More information about the Okanagan business can be found here.