Winery inks pot-infused drink deal

STRATHROY A Southwestern Ontario pot producer whose products focus on women has signed a tentative deal with one of Canada’s largest wine distributors to produce a cannabis-infused drink.

Strathroy’s Eve and Co. has been working on the partnership with Essex County-based Colio Estate Wines in Harrow, the company behind the popular Girls’ Night Out brand, for the past nine months, said Kelsey Jobson, the director of product management for Eve and Co.

“We loved their Girls’ Night Out brand,” Jobson said of what drew the company to Colio.

The yet-to-be-named drink will be a rose-style beverage containing 2.5 milligrams of both tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the component of cannabis that produces the euphoric high, and cannabidiol (CBD), the non-psychoactive component of marijuana touted for its therapeutic benefits.

“It doesn’t taste like cannabis,”

Jobson said.

Eve and Co. will use marijuana grown at its Strathroy greenhouse for the drink, but third-party companies will extract the compounds and bottle the beverage, which will retail for between $10 and 15 for a 250-millilitre bottle.

Marijuana firms across the country have struck partnerships with booze-makers such as Molson Coors Brewing Co. and Anheuser-busch Inbev to create non-alcoholic, cannabis-infused beverages.

Health Canada, the federal pot regulator, has barred companies from using the words “beer” or “wine” to market cannabis-infused drinks, which can’t contain any alcohol.

In Canada, the market for cannabis edibles and other 2.0 products will be worth more than $2.5 billion, according to a 2019 report from Deloitte, a global professional services firm.

But one cannabis industry analyst is skeptical about the market for marijuana-infuse beverages, noting the drinks make up just two per cent of the market in American states where the products are already legal.

“If you’re in the beverage game, it’s a very long market,” said Craig Wiggins, managing director of market researcher Thecannalysts.

Almost 40 per cent of alcoholic drinks are sold at places like bars, concerts and festivals, where the products are also heavily advertised, Wiggins said.

“You can’t do that here, so launching and marketing a product is completely different,” he said.

Marijuana-infused beverages will be legally sold only though Ontario’s government-run delivery service or at bricks-and-mortar retail stores. Right now, there are only 24 of those outlets operating, although 50 more will be opened in the coming months.

Another challenge will be storing the drinks at pot retail stores, many of which are already tight for space.