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Ontario Cannabis Fieldnotes: How Heritage turns cannabis into liquid diamonds
Patience is key when it comes to creating consistent — and purely potent — “forever” products. Find out how Heritage Cannabis crafts the cannabis diamonds used in its Adults Only vapes, infused pre-rolls and more.
Last updated March 27, 2025 | Published on March 27, 2025
When Heritage Cannabis says, “Adults Only,” they mean it.
The company’s Adults Only brand, known for its cheeky NSFW (not safe for work) packaging and suggestive product names (think Promiscuous Peach, Missionary Mango, Bumpin’ Blue Raspberry), delivers a seriously powerful punch thanks to a not-so-secret ingredient: liquid diamonds.
ABOUT HERITAGE CANNABIS
Founded: 2007; current company 2020
Size: about 150 employees
Known for: Nearly every category, including infused pre-rolls and blunts, vape carts, shatter, resin, rosin, honey oil, hash oil and live diamonds
Shop: Adults Only
Heritage makes its liquid diamonds using a time-intensive hands-on process: Resin is extracted from whole flower and then left to sit in shallow containers until crystals begin to naturally form. Picture the way maple syrup or honey can crystallize, except, in the case of Heritage, the crystals — a.k.a., diamonds — are exactly what they’re looking for.
“All that liquid is poured off, and all the crystallization that’s left over is converted into very, very high-THC products,” says David Schwede, CEO of Heritage Cannabis.
“The crystals that we ‘crash out’ are pure, 100% THCA. There’s nothing else at all,” adds Justin Wild, vice-president of product at Heritage.
Those high-potency diamonds are used in a few ways across the Adults Only brand. Some diamonds are broken up into small pieces to coat pre-rolls and blunts, increasing their potency. Others are reliquefied to fill vape cartridges and dispensers used for dabbing, as well as infuse pre-rolls and blunts. Under Heritage’s RAD brand, the diamonds are sold whole, leaving it up to the customer to decide on their preferred method of consumption.
Schwede says that unlike many “counterfeiters” who slap the diamond label on regular distillate, Heritage’s diamonds are legit, born of a month-long process that lets nature take its course.
When non-intoxicating THCA is heated, dried or cured, it converts into intoxicating THC.
“We’re truly taking THCA and liquefying it and making a pure product, and it costs a lot more money to do it. That’s why our product’s a little bit more expensive,” says Schwede. Heritage uses whole flower for its extracts, and its diamonds are made at a low temperature, two choices that help deliver more terpenes and higher concentrations of cannabinoids. Their proprietary decarboxylation process converts the THCA crystals into intoxicating THC liquid without degrading the cannabinoids.
The innovation doesn’t stop there. A new product — solventless liquid diamonds made with ice water extraction — will hit the market shortly. “It’s all about purity and flavour and smoothness,” says Schwede, “and just providing consumers with the best product in its class.”
How Adults Only stands apart
Schwede and Wild came to Heritage Cannabis through the 2020 acquisition of their previous venture, Premium 5, an Alberta-based maker of concentrates and vape products.
Today’s Heritage is a result of several acquired companies — Premium 5, plus medical cannabis company Purefarma and legacy-minded Pura Vida — all collaborating to bring their unique products under one house of brands, including Adults Only, Dank Drops, Juicy Hoots, Chillbilly and RAD.
How Heritage makes its liquid diamonds
- Heritage’s partner farmers harvest high-quality bud. It’s hand-sorted and flash-frozen to preserve cannabinoids and terpenes.
- Frozen cannabis is concentrated into resin using ultra-low-temperature hydrocarbon extraction.
- Resin is poured into dishes and sealed in Heritage’s vacuum ovens.
- The resulting high-terpene liquid is hand-poured off, leaving behind crystalline THCA diamonds.
- Diamonds are converted into THC liquid using a proprietary decarboxylation process.
- Heritage uses liquid diamonds in vape carts, infused pre-rolls and other products.
Each of Heritage’s brands is intended for a specific segment of the cannabis market. The NSFW branding helps Adults Only reach a segment that might appreciate a little comic relief with their high-quality weed. “The whole brand’s purpose is to be able to make light or make jokes around work, parenting, sex — life in general,” says Schwede.
Wild says the diamonds are a way to meet the demand for high THC potency and quality. “If somebody goes to the dispensary and they [are thinking of buying] two products that are the same potency, but one is a better quality, they’ll end up going with the better quality one more often,” Wild explains.
Commitment to quality
The diamonds are made in Heritage’s 130,000-square-foot facility in Fort Erie, Ont., near the Niagara Falls, Ont., and Buffalo, N.Y., border. The company has exclusive partnerships with a handful of farms that grow Heritage’s genetics and produce most of the cannabis it uses across the 70-plus products it currently has on the market.
That process is intentional. Rather than splitting its focus by also growing cannabis, Heritage’s priority is delivering the best quality products in new and boundary-pushing formats.
Schwede says the company blind-tests every single lot in its Fort Erie sensory testing lab before it goes to market. Anything that scores below a seven out of 10 doesn’t ship. “That’s an entire lot of product that we probably ran for a week — could be $20,000 to $30,000 worth of material that we’re having to redo so consumers are getting the best product,” he says.
The goal is to cement Heritage as part of the cannabis landscape, to deliver “forever” products that remain consistent and dependable across generations of cannabis consumers. Time will tell if diamonds are forever.
