When she opens her new wine shop, Rocks + Acid, Paula de Pano has a set of firm but friendly principles at the ready: Acid, not alcohol. Families, not factories. Drink, not get drunk.
After 15 years in the beverage industry, de Pano—a stylish star in the wine world, with a degree from the Culinary Institute of America and a lengthy list of accolades under her belt—has come to know her values well.
“I know there will be a lot of, like, ‘Oh, this sounds very political,’” she says of her future shop’s mantras. “No, it’s not political at all. I just call it basic human kindness.”
At the end of August, de Pano sent out an email to a close group of customers announcing that she was leaving her post as beverage director at Fearrington Village, where she has worked for several years, and opening a wine shop in Southern Village.
Todd Chatterton, Maitre d’ at Fearrington since March 2020, will take over her role as beverage director.
Rocks + Acid, located at 712 Market Street in the former Medlin-Davis dry cleaner space in Southern Village, does not yet have a set opening date—de Pano says permits have been submitted, and that she’s hopeful that they will be approved quickly and that a more sluggish-than-usual global supply chain will pick up the pace—but she hopes for a Spring 2022 opening.
“[Paula] is easily one of the most knowledgeable sommeliers in the country and offers a fun and laid back approach to wine,” sommelier Max Kast, a friend of De Pano’s, told the INDY over email. “Her space will be a spot where people from novice to expert will be able to find great wine and learn about new wines and regions, all in an approachable and non-intimidating way.”
The name of the shop is a nod toward terroir and acid-focused wines (“No, it is not a record store or a rock climbing club for fans of LSD,” she joked in her announcement email), which she hopes to carry from “far-flung regions of Argentina to the steep hillsides of Germany,” with an eye toward environmentally friendly winemaking practices.
“You see a lot more care put into the wine, and more noticeable sustainable practices, with smaller families as opposed to larger factories or corporations. I really want to highlight those producers who are very focused on non-interventional winemaking,” says de Pano, referencing terroir (an ineffable French term that translates to a ‘sense of place,’ or, a bottle of wine that distinctly reflects the soil, atmosphere, and human effort behind it).
De Pano says she hopes the shop, an airy, 1,150-square-foot space with a garage door that pops open to the outside, will fill the void left by Southern Seasons, which closed in early 2020. The shop will stock a rotating inventory of 300-350 labels, with bar seating (and a menu of cheese and charcuterie options) indoors and seating for up to 15 outdoors. She also plans to teach wine classes.
De Pano grew up in Manila in the Philippines in a non-drinking Catholic family. Curiosity led her to wine, and a marketing job at a wine bar; then, in 2008, she moved to the United States and enrolled in New York’s Culinary Institute of America. She then began the certification process toward becoming an advanced sommelier—the second-highest sommelier rank (following master sommelier, a distinction held by just 155 people since 1997, 131 of whom are men.)
She’s worked at Fearrington Village since 2010, save for a two-year stint at New York City’s prestigious, three-Michelin star restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, where she was a senior sommelier.
The road to becoming an industry leader has not been without its challenges. At Eleven Madison Park—the kind of restaurant where, at least pre-pandemic, you have to book a reservation 28 days in advance, or else risk being on a nightly waitlist of 150—de Pano recalls asserting herself with three-inch boots while serving customers accustomed to discussing the wine program with white male servers.
“People have always looked at me differently because of my color and because of my accent,” she says. “I lived in New York for a couple of years, working in fine-dining restaurants, and there’s a different treatment that you get. You always have to prove that you are as good as everyone else.”
Opening her shop is the chance to create and share her vision of what a wine shop can be—the shop firmly bills itself as “pro-women, Immigrant, and POC, and LGBTQ+”—as well as to deepen roots and open doors in North Carolina’s intimate wine community.
Hai Tran, a Philadelphia-based sommelier who knows de Pano from time spent in the Triangle, recalls how the wine community used to discourage “mixing politics and social beliefs.” He’s excited to see a shop with a different approach.
“Paula has always been a detail-oriented individual and hearing her talk about designs, layouts, and overall ambiance, this will be a wine shop unlike anything that currently exists in North Carolina,” he says. “Being her own boss, Paula has the opportunity to impart her philosophies and beliefs into the business, as can be seen by her stance on how wines will be selected, who will be represented on the shelves, and what causes she will actively work to promote.”
De Pano says she’s also excited about Southern Village because it’s a community that’s very “curious” and “open to a lot of different wines.”
As to whether curiosity about wine then lends itself to the cavalier customer, there’s another future shop mantra for that: “We welcome the curious to the savvy, but not the snooty.”
Correction: The print version of this story incorrectly identified the shop as Acid + Rocks, not Rocks + Acid. We regret the error.
Support independent local journalism. Join the INDY Press Club to help us keep fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle.
Follow Arts & Culture Editor Sarah Edwards on Twitter or send an email to sedwards@indyweek.com.
