Conner’s Wine Cellar, now in it’s 13th year of operation was originally founded by Bill and Janice Conner.
An avid golfer, Bill forged many strong relationships and a modest customer base while on the greens of the Chilliwack Golf and Country Club.
Friends to all, Bill and Janice soon had a close ‘family’ of loyal customers, who would regularly stop by the shop to make a great batch of wine and enjoy Bill’s conversation and Janice’s sharp wit.

In February of 2007 however, the Conner’s sought semi-retirement in greener pastures, and passed the U-Vin torch to Carole and Calvin Quaite, an energetic young couple with roots in the Chilliwack area.
Realizing that they would miss the dear friends they had made over the past decade, Bill and Jan knew the business was in good hands, and were excited to start a new chapter of their lives in the Salmon Arm area.

Carole and Calvin Quaite were also starting a new chapter in their lives. With a return to the Chilliwack area, a new addition to the family on the way, and an exciting new business venture ahead of them, their passion for wine and entrepreneurial spirit were finally being realized.

While Calvin’s passion for wine comes from 15 years of home brew and wine making experimentation and successes, Carole’s love for the grape is purely hereditary. Carole’s grandfather André Malécot is a Parisian born connoisseur and amateur sommelier whose lineage extends to the elite Chateau Maléscot St. Exupery winery in Bordeaux, France.

With dreams of someday running their own B.C. boutique winery, Carole and Calvin realized that mere passion and inherited affinity for the fruit of the vine was not sufficient – there was still plenty to learn about cultivating, harvesting, blending, and fining before such a venture. The purchase of Conner’s Wine Cellar was the perfect way to hone their skills and master the subtle and delectable art of wine making.

In Calvin’s words, “At the end of 2006, Carole and I were doing a “pie-in-the-sky” exercise, making a list of things we’d love to do with the rest of our lives – you know, if we could do “anything” we wanted to for a career, what would give us the most satisfaction? We’ve always had a love affair with wine, and we’ve always said that when we ’semi-retire’ it would be wonderful to have some land in the Okanagan region to grow grapes and have a boutique winery… but being rational, we realized we don’t know much about soils and pruning, and grafting, and hours of sunlight, harvesting, and all the aspects of owning a vineyard that come before the actual pressing of the grapes. So we agreed that ‘vineyard owner’ wouldn’t really be logical until we had some experience. Ironically, I had spent a week in the summer of ‘06, looking for acreage in the interior; everywhere from Barriere to Grand Forks and all places in between… Falkland, Vernon, Summerland, Osoyoos, anywhere that I thought grapes might grow… thankfully I never found the ‘perfect’ site, because in retrospect, I’m no terroir – I know next to nothing about site selection, drainage, soils, all the things that are so vital to a successful crop. Anyway, when Carole and I were writing our independent lists of what top-20 careers would be most satisfying to us, both of us, unbeknownst to the other, had put “U-Vin” at the very top of our lists.”

“We were living in Coquitlam at the time though,” interjected Carole, “and we not only knew that the wine making market there was saturated, but we desperately wanted to escape the city and cater to clientele in a more ‘relaxed’ region. The city was really getting to us – getting way too fast paced and way to impersonal. We were pretty much ready to relocate anywhere in the southern half of B.C., and we looked at a lot of really nice places that we were sure we’d enjoy, should we relocate there, but it seemed there was always one thing missing; roots. Calvin grew up in Chilliwack, graduated from high school there, and had brought me back with him countless times to visit family. Having grown up in North Vancouver myself, and not used to anything but mountain slope and city on the horizon, I strangely fell in love with the expansive flatlands of the Fraser Valley, especially Chilliwack, cozily framed on virtually all sides by expansive mountain ranges – I always felt cozy in Chilliwack. While Calvin had always talked fondly about Rainbow Country, he had never expressed a longing to return there, so you can certainly imaging my surprise when we showed each other our top-five places to live in B.C. and Chilliwack was at the top of both of our lists!”

The next step was to look for commercial space in Chilliwack to house a new U-Vin. Amazingly, the first commercial business listed for sale in the Chilliwack area was “Conner’s Wine Cellar”. Was this a sign? Could this be any more perfect?

On February 1st, 2007, Carole and Calvin took ownership of Conner’s Wine Cellar. “We were pretty green our first couple of weeks, but we were welcomed with warmth and kindness from customer after customer, and every day we’d go home from work happy and excited about the great people we had met that day. Bill and Jan truly made a lot of friends through this business, and we’re so happy that we’re being accepted as a part of that family. We certainly don’t take it for granted, we’re honoured that with the Conner’s blessing, we’re being entrusted to carry on their tradition of masterfully crafted wine, honest prices, and good company. I don’t have Jan’s dry wit“, chuckled Calvin, “but I’m working on it!“