Last week I attended a wine dinner hosted by Arterra Wines. Not only has Arterra consistently been one of my favorite wineries, but this event also featured many of their newest releases. Since I’ve been anticipating tasting their 2023 vintage reds for years, my attendance was practically mandatory.

Wine dinners are often a combination of food pairings and education, and this event didn’t disappoint. Owner/winemaker Jason Murray discussed the overall ethos behind his winemaking, as well as the wines being served.

For those who aren’t familiar with Arterra, Jason is one of Virginia’s foremost proponents of minimal intervention winemaking. He’s so hyper ‘minimal’ he frowns on using techniques even other self-described ‘minimalists winemakers’ utilize, and calls his winemaking style ‘clean winemaking’ (which is stylistically similar to ‘natural wine’, although he prefers his wines filtered as opposed to cloudy).

Jason could write essays on what constitutes clean winemaking, but the short version boils down to two things: limited (and more recently, 100% organic) sprays in the vineyard, and the use of natural yeast in the cellar. He also doesn’t use new oak in his wines, as that would insert an external flavor profile.

Limited chemical spraying has always been one of Jason’s hallmarks; the main reason he previously tolerated any non-organic spraying was because for years he didn’t have an effective method to control black rot (a destructive grape disease that afflicts vineyards in warm, humid areas).

Jason started his move to 100% organic farming 2023, after newer organic materials came on the market. When his 1/2-acre trial run proved successful, he expanded his organic program to his entire estate vineyard. As of 2025, his estate vineyard is now fully organic and should receive its organic vineyard certification by 2028.

The other element of Jason’s winemaking is his usage of native yeast. During the event, Jason explained “Yeast is the starting point to either express your site or override that expression to produce wine the way you want to produce it”.

He further explained how his ‘clean winemaking’ style had three main outcomes; 1) wines that produce wine a rounder, broader profile, which is more outwardly expansive on the palate, 2) wines with a richer ‘chewer’ texture, which is especially unusual in dry wines, and 3) his wines have wonderfully fresh, clean finish. These factors were present in the samples we had that night.

The wines he served were from the 2023 vintage, widely regarded as one of Virginia’s best in decades.

Wine and Food Pairing

Nomad Provisions were our chefs for the evening. They served a series of small plates and chose the wine pairings for them (Jason was happy to let the food experts select the pairings).

2023 Roussanne (with focaccia bread): Very full bodied for a white wine, with maybe a touch of lemon peel on the palate. Those lemon notes became more expressive the longer the wine sat in my glass. I thought it was a great starter wine, and I assume the high texture was a direct result of Jason’s ‘clean winemaking’ practices.

Arterra is one of the few roussanne growers in Virginia. Ironically, a friend of mine texted me a day earlier praising this particular wine during his visit a day earlier, not knowing I was going to this event.

2023 Petit Sirah (with roasted vegetable tart). Juicy and bright, but the tannins were there. I found notes of leather, or perhaps tobacco at the end. This is what Arterra provides to guests who are looking for wine with structure and backbone, like Cab Sauv.

Jason explained Petit Sirah is something of an outlier in Virginia. Apparently, Petit Sirah tends to suck up water so its flavor profile can be very vintage dependent. That said, in the vineyard it’s also become a lot easier to work with once the vines matured. Oddly enough, Jason’s initial Petit Sirah harvests produced huge clusters (the opposite you’d expect from a grape with the name ‘petit’ in the name) but those clusters shrank as the vines matured.

2023 Petit Verdot (paired with arosticcini, and a pine nut & arugula pesto). Hearty and earthy. This is a great grape for Jason’s minimalist winemaking, as it’s one of the most weather hardy vinifera grapes in the state. If Jason could pick out a state grape for Virginia, this would be his #1 choice (note: Jason is not a big fan of cabernet franc, so he admits he’s slightly biased here).

PS – Jason and I both learned that ‘arosticcini’ is just a fancy word for a lamb kabob!

2023 Tannat (with beef bourguignon). If a wine could be described as ‘brooding’, this is it. As it opened, I found notes of black cherry, plus maybe some cola qualities as well. Most notably, there were lots, lots, and lots of tannin.

2023 Crooked Run red blend (with chocolate raspberry cake). Also heavy on tannins, but not quite to the degree of the tannat. I kind of wish it had more fruit qualities, but I appreciated how it evolved the most in the glass (in fact, I would say the sampled I tried all evolved quite a bit).

I finished up with a Chardonnay, which like the roussanne had a lot of intensity for a white wine.

I was supposed to be joined by Dan Redding of MyNovaWineBlog, but he bailed on me because this event was rescheduled! We actually tasted the 2023 release earlier in the year, but I get bragging rights for being at the dinner (na-na-nana-na, Dan).