(From left) Andy Stites and Ryan Nottingham of Terroirizer
It’s common for Ryan Nottingham to get a text from a customer. One of his recent messages from a faithful buyer reads, “Hi, this is Gina, your fave customer looking to place an order in the next day or two.” The New Jersey oenophile is known to order a dozen bottles every three weeks like clockwork. On the hunt for a few specific selections, she made the mistake of spilling the beans to a pal about her new natural wine source that is states away. The rest of the text says, “I told my friend about your shop and she bought all the Viti Vini Bibi.”
Following a GIF and emoji exchange, Nottingham ensures her that he will have a shipment headed her way soon. “We build this repertoire with everyone,” the VCU graduate says.
Nottingham and co-founder Andy Stites operate Terroirizer, a local wine delivery service that also ships across the country. Although they lack a retail storefront, their garage, located in Scott’s Addition, is stocked floor to ceiling with bottles of natural wines. Celebrating its first year this month, Terroirizer is part of a growing niche of the wine community that has been on the rise for the past decade.
The partners have a long history that traces back to high school days in Virginia Beach and their first introduction to wine via a 3-liter handle of Carlo Rossi sangria. Their 20s included crashing on each other’s couches, becoming roommates and eventually cultivating an obsession for the funky, more yeast-forward side of wine. And now, while maintaining their day jobs, the 30-somethings are running one of the few dedicated natural wine shops in the commonwealth. While local outlets including Celladora Wines and RichWine also focus on natural wines, Terroirizer says they take their commitment to the extreme.
“I will boldly say that we have the most strict parameters as to what we put in our shop,” Nottingham says.
Terroirizer has an exacting checklist for what it sells, often sourcing from small local importers such as Plant Wines and Native Selections. They seek bottles that are zero-zero, meaning nothing is added or removed during the winemaking process that is not naturally present in the wine. Growers don’t use pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers or additives. Grapes must be grown at least organically, while most are grown biodynamically.
While these firm guidelines can mean that the end result in the glass is less consistent than its counterparts, people like Nottingham and Stites — and Gina — are drawn to that slight uncertainty and the pure, untouched spirit of natural wines.
“I can say with confidence there’s not another wine shop in Virginia that is actually saying to their distributors, ‘Don’t ever show us or send us that if it has 20 parts per million of sulfite.’ That’s important to us,” Nottingham says. “Everything we do is pretty much Old World, and I would argue it’s older. The way these wines are made is the way wines were made thousands of years ago. It wasn’t until the ’40s or ’50s when chemical companies started developing chemically based additives and crap like that to add to wine.”
Nottingham and Stites store bottles in a small garage. The duo deliver wine locally and ship across the country.
Bandmates with punk rock roots, Nottingham and Stites embrace similar DIY, nonconforming, anti-authority beliefs with their wines. They trust that nature provides everything needed for a delicious glass of Beaujolais. They relish the character that wines develop on their own.
“What I think is cool about natural wine producers is their artistry — someone who does something a certain way, and they do it their way uncompromisingly,” Stites says. “It’s not compromising for efficiencies.”
Similarly, the evolution of Terroirizer happened with little to no intervention.
Following a summer abroad in France, Nottingham became infatuated with the country, and shortly after his return, he landed a job at Carytown’s Can Can Brasserie. There, he would gain a strong foundation in wine, particularly from the charismatic longtime wine director, Bob Talcott, who died last January.
Slowly but surely, Nottingham went deeper into the wine world, and he was eventually introduced to natural wine in 2013 during a return journey to France. “It was so energetic, it had spirit and soul and vibrancy that I had never experienced before — it was electric,” he says of that first sip. “I had the bug. Any chance I had to find natural wine, I would take it or save up, and any extra money was going to wine.”
Stites had a similar reaction to his first taste of natural wine: “My f---ing head fell off,” he says. “I’ve had other wine that’s not natural, but probably 999 out of 1,000 bottles since then have been natural wine. Once you get a taste of the living, it’s hard to go back.”
Currently, Terroirizer hosts tastings on a regular basis at spots from Na Nin to Pizza Bones and offers a wine club. Each month, Stites, a former journalism student, produces a witty and conversational zine-esque newsletter featuring a recipe to pair with select bottles, as well as song suggestions that set the mood.
“It’s a monthly reminder that we should go deep into what we love about natural wine and connecting to people in that way, sharing it on the level we want to through that,” he says.
That resolve and dedication are echoed by Nottingham.
“Anything you pour yourself into, if you’re really pouring yourself into it, you question it at times, but I’m so stoked to be doing this. All it takes is a pep talk from Andy or a text from Gina,” he says. “We’re building a real nice community.”
