Proxies

Yesterday, we released the first batch of our new Proxies Big Red exclusively to our online audience. Non-alc reds are the hardest thing to get right, and we've spent over a year working on just this blend. It's deep, dark, and full of red fruit but also dry and herbaceous on the finish. It's something you actually want to drink alone, and with food. Look out for more soon, including Big Red's entry into restaurants and retail but trust me, you want to taste this and you will need to recalibrate your thinking on what a non-alc red can be. 🍷 https://lnkd.in/gt3qSzkt

With the launch of our new Proxies Bubbly Red yesterday, we now have a complete lineup of the best-tasting non-alc wine cans around. Wine for lunch, wine for summer picnics, wine for the beach, wine for pizza night, wine for weeknights and beyond. White, rosé, and red for any day, anytime. Find them online now at drinkproxies.com and in some of your favorite retailers soon. These are the best and most fun products we've ever made and I can't wait for more people to taste them. Oh, and stay tuned for new bottles soon too...

Last week, we launched our latest Proxies collaboration with our friends at Nomadica Wines. Kristin Olszewski founded Nomadica with a mission to make exceptional wine accessible to all. Building on her experience working as a somm at some of the country's top restaurants, Nomadica quickly became the leading American canned wine (and now boxed wine too!). When we decided to make more Proxies cans, there was no one we wanted to work with more. It’s always an honor when someone who knows and loves wine wants to join the Proxies family, and always a great learning experience. From our first discussions on flavor, Kristin pushed us to explore lively and unexpected aromatics, referencing both Nomadica’s own fan-favorite orange wine and their sparkling white, along with her favorite Mediterranean whites with a touch of skin contact. She also said she wanted to try hibiscus. In a white. Well, together we made it happen. There’s hibiscus, but also grapefruit zest, pomelo, lilac, mint, and much more in this textural and aromatic bubbly white. It’s easy to crush but as multifaceted as drinks come. Find it on our online store today and in lots more places soon. It’s set to be my drink of the summer. And maybe yours?

These collabs and these cans were just the start. Coming soon: collab cans and much more! Paired with our new sparkling, Gold Crush, and soon a new red blend that might just make you think non-alc red wine is worth drinking, the Proxies portfolio is evolving. All our customer feedback and 80+ past blends have gone into these new innovations designed for restaurants, retail, and beyond. But all this takes resources even when you're running as sustainably as we are now, so I'm here to say we're raising money and looking for amazing partners who can help us scale and bring all these seriously tasty, serious and fun new products to the masses. If you're an angel investor, family office, or fund and want to be part of something special, reach out for more info or to share a glass soon. Cheers!

So great to have the opportunity to pour some of our newest Proxies yesterday at the Target Food and Beverage Innovation Summit (look closely at the photos for a sneak peek of some fun stuff coming soon!). Loved meeting other emerging brands all hoping to bring some delicious "newness" to Target's shelves and the amazing people at Target who make it such a great retailer for both brands and all their guests. Thank you to VMG Partners for the invite and planning (shout out to Kathy Yuh, Maria R., Jose A. Bermudez, Wayne Wu) along with the whole KMG Kinneberg Management Group led by Doug Kinneberg. Cheers to the start of a great conversation!

Quality and credibility over everything. This photo is proof that Proxies are something special. Six Proxies, six collabs with the best chefs, sommeliers, and winemakers anywhere. If I told you three years ago that a non-alc wine brand would collaborate with industry leaders like Dominique Crenn, Sean Brock, André Mack, Miguel De Leon, Division Winemaking, and Beverly Kim and Johnny Clark you’d ask me how much they paid for the pleasure. But we didn’t pay a thing. These are all true collaborations and I couldn’t be more proud to have all their faces on our labels and brilliant blends in our bottles. There are listicles, awards, and influencers but true quality and innovation will always win. And this is just the beginning...

Time for week four of the Proxies Guide to Dry-ish Jan, and while the lack of sunlight up here in Toronto has made the first three weeks feel like an eternity, I’ve been compensating by making my drinking a little more fun of late. No more nights of Lacroix or water—we’re pulling out the fancy stemware every night, and even mixing up some simple drinks with those dusty bar tools. This past week I turned to some of our earliest sparkling Proxies, checking in on bottles of Bulle and Tart stashed away at our production facility. I warmed up with our latest big red—stay tuned for more on this one very soon— and a bottle of our Andre Hueston Mack collab, AHM, paired with some old-school spaghetti and meat sauce. I played mixologist with fresh fruits, bitters, and some fun ingredients from our friends at Acid League and their much-lauded cocktail kit from a year ago, and I even turned some still Proxies into spritzes with some soda water, Wilderton Bittersweet Aperitivo, and the zest from a sumo citrus. Side note: sumos, or dekopons (shout out to an old limited edition Proxies blend, Dekoponzi Scheme) are the best oranges around and they’re just coming into season—find some and thank me later. And, yes, I had some wine too with a can of an unnamed and amazing orange wine that might just have something to do with a future release over here. So for your week four, embrace the fun and the fancy at once. Pull out the Zaltos, mix up a spritz, warm up with some red and red sauce, and just enjoy what’s in your glass. Summon your inner André Mack and pair your Proxies with chips (you should know that I love chips so much that for my birthday we did a blind tasting of 18 different crazy chip flavors). And mark the last weekend of the month by making a reservation somewhere special—be it casual and delicious like one of our newest partners and longtime favorite, Roberta's in NY or the amazing Anajak Thai Cuisine in LA, or the fanciest of them all like The French Laundry, Alinea, Boka, or Oriole. See you next week for one last installment. In the meantime, we have a lot more news coming this week including an amazing giveaway with countless NA brands (thanks to the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association (ANBA)), another chance to win dinner on us, and more. Cheers!

Today, Proxies turns three. In three years we’ve accomplished so much. Nearly 100 different blends of this new form of wine alternative. Six game-changing collabs with titans of the food and drinks world. Hundreds of thousands of bottles sold. And thousands upon thousands of new friends, fans, and strangers who just like to drink better when not drinking alcohol. This past year has been particularly transformative. My daughter also turned three this year, so I know how quickly things can change at this age. One day you just start selling at Erewhon, Sprouts, Foxtrot, and Binny’s, and writing your name with no help. You launch single-serve sparkling rosé cans to rave reviews (stay tuned for more on these soon!), and you get dressed in thirteen different shades of pink all by yourself. You collaborate with chefs like Dominique Crenn, Beverly Kim, and Johnny Clark and the trailblazing winemakers at Division Winemaking Co., and you learn how to spell coffee. But maybe neither of those things is particularly normal for a three-year-old. When we started, non-alc wine was a disdained category. Chefs, somms (and our team!) didn’t like what was on the market—and that’s putting it nicely. To shift the narrative so strongly, so quickly is beyond my wildest imagination. Dominique Crenn is one of the best chefs in the world. And she just organically wanted to throw herself into creating a new blend with us? All our success is thanks to our amazing team, customers, and retail and restaurant partners. They showed the world there is demand for a better wine alternative. They continuously help us make better and better products with feedback and reviews. They asked for sparkling and for single-serve Proxies, and those have been some of our biggest successes to date. They keep asking for a bigger, bolder red—and I promise we’re listening! A lot more has happened this year too—we won Best Wine Alternative at The World Alcohol-Free Awards, we grew into hundreds more restaurants and retailers across North America, we launched our new permanent sparkling Gold Crush, we were lucky enough to meet some of you at events in Chicago, Toronto, LA, and NY, and so much more. So as the year comes to a close—whether you’re toasting with a glass of wine, a glass of Proxies, or both—here’s to a happy and healthy new year with great food on the table and delicious drinks in your glass. See you in Dry January (or as I prefer, Dryish January) with more updates to come! Scott Friedmann Devin Campbell Peta Suzanne Oshry Michael McAvena Yash Raghuvanshi Sarah F. Carmen Felix Cole Pearsall

Thanks to Forbes for including Proxies in their guide to the best NA wine, noting that "no one in the zero-proof space (and likely few in the alcoholic space) has worked as closely as Proxies has with James Beard award-winning chefs to craft beverages." I'd put us up against any alc brand in this respect and pretty much any food brand too. Especially when you realize all these collabs are totally organic and not pay-for-play. There's nothing normal about what we're doing and I'm eternally grateful to these amazing partners. https://lnkd.in/e6fN8qjx

If you've planned your office holiday party or happy hour and forgot to include a great non-alc option, Proxies is here to help. Shoot us a message at sales@drinkproxies.com with some details on your event and we'll make sure your offerings are delicious and inclusive this year. And if you're lucky, we might even send over some of our newest unreleased blends on us...