secrets and lives —
AND THE 7 SINS with CARMEN D’ONOFRIO
A
s managing partner of Stile Brands, president of the Commercial Drive Business Society, and member of the Board of Directors for the Vancouver International Wine Festival, Carmen D’Onofrio Jr. wears a lot of hats in his professional life, and he does so with a level of passion and drive that’s infectious within moments of talking to him. Carmen, who was born and raised in Vancouver, came to the wine and import business in 2002, after his career as a professional soccer player was cut short by a knee injury. “From the ages of 17 to 27, I was always away. I went to Europe to play for a year, then I went to Stanford University in California, and I played professional soccer for five years,” he says. “Then I got injured, and my father became sick with cancer (non-Hodgkins lymphoma), and it was just time for me to come home.” He took the reins of Stile Brands, a company started by his father in 1991 as a hobby, to bring in Italian wines and other alcohols not readily available in the Canadian market at the time. But what began as a sideline quickly grew into one of Western Canada’s biggest premium importers of beverage alcohols. “It’s a passion for us,” says Carmen of the family business. “If you’re doing what you love and you relish the challenge, you’ll fall in love with the business—and we did, and it just continued to grow.” He’s been running the company since 2002, right when Stile Brands made one of its first big marks on the industry.
WORDS ANGELA COWAN 76
B O U L E VA R D
X
PHOTOGRAPHY LIA CROWE
