Sam Lerman won’t forget the first time he tried Ukrainian alcohol. He was seated around a dining table in a safe house in Western Ukraine a few weeks after the Russian invasion in February 2022. A former Air Force technical sergeant decorated for valor in combat in Afghanistan, Lerman had gone there as a volunteer adviser to the Ministry of Strategic Industries.
When a Ukrainian housemate offered him a swig of horilka—Ukrainian vodka—he was stunned by its smooth taste and finish.
A month later, Lerman, 38, returned home to Quantico and went searching for Ukrainian wine and horilka stateside. “I’m going to all these wine shops in Northern Virginia, saying, ‘Do you have Ukrainian wine?’ And the answer was, ‘No. Ukraine makes wine?’
“I got more and more frustrated by this,” says the entrepreneur, whose parents and brother live in Arlington.
So he decided to import the goods himself. “[I want to] show Americans some side of Ukraine that’s not the war…something that the vast majority of people will enjoy tremendously,” he says.
In January 2023, Lerman pitched the idea of starting a distribution company to two fellow veterans, one of whom had served in the Marine Corps; the other in the Ukrainian military. Together they formed SPYRT Worldwide. The name is a nod to both alcoholic spirits and the resilient spirit of the Ukrainian people.
SPYRT now imports about 30 types of wine ($15-$500 per bottle) and eight vodkas ($14-$35 each).
One of Lerman’s first stops as a distributor was Arrowine & Cheese in the Lee Heights Shops, a Best of Arlington 2025 winner. Jim Cutts, a buyer and manager for the retailer, says he knew almost nothing about Ukrainian wines until Lerman showed up about a month ago.
“There really weren’t Ukrainian wines being imported,” Cutts says. He tried a few and invited Lerman to serve them at one of the shop’s weekly wine tastings. “There was a big turnout for the tasting, and everybody was really enthusiastic. Most of [the wines] sold out that day.”
According to Lerman, SPYRT’s mission is two-fold. One tenet is practicing what he calls “wine diplomacy” to expose Americans to a rich and underrepresented aspect of Ukrainian culture.
“I fell in love with Ukraine, with the country, the people, the unbelievable resilience. The spirit of the Ukrainians was intoxicating and deeply addictive,” he says. (Beverage business notwithstanding, he’s since taken another job that “let me go back to Ukraine and continue working on the war effort in a way that I could have an impact on the war. That’s about all I can say on the record on that part of it.”)
The second pillar of SPYRT’s mission is continued support of Ukraine. The company gives at least 10% of its earnings to Invictus Global Response, a nongovernmental organization established by U.S. and British military veterans in 2023 to clear landmines in Ukraine and other conflict-ridden locales.
Currently, the distributor has two brand ambassadors: Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who was President Trump’s special representative to Ukraine during his first term; and retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. William Swenson, a U.S. Medal of Honor recipient.
Ukrainian winemaker Giorgi Iukuridze, whose wines are distributed by SPYRT, also has a diplomatic background. The owner of Shabo Winery, a 19th-century vineyard by the Black Sea, worked at the Atlantic Council and as a political adviser to the European Parliament in Brussels.
Representing one of Europe’s oldest terroirs, Shabo wines are served in Michelin-starred restaurants in London and Paris. “You could buy it in Tel Aviv or Tokyo or London or Berlin or Copenhagen or Cape Town, South Africa, but it was never brought to the U.S.,” Lerman says. Until now.
Arrowine stocks five Shabo wines, priced between $24.99 and $59.99.
Other vintners distributed by SPYRT include Father’s Wine, based in the Ternopil region of Ukraine, and Wataga, a collective of Ukrainian winemakers and artists.
The company also distributes eight vodkas from two award-winning distilleries: Ukrainian Spirit, which has been operating since 1838, and Hetman, which dates to 1782. Hetman Elite won the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America’s 2025 Wine & Spirits Tasting Competition Best in Show Vodka title, while Ukrainian Spirit took the Double Gold Medal.
At present, only the wines are available in Virginia stores. SPYRT has an application pending with the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC), which maintains exclusive selling rights for hard liquor.
Although SPYRT started shipping only a few weeks ago, Lerman says they are expanding rapidly, with plans to distribute wine and vodka in California, Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky and Nevada.
Meanwhile, it recently added Vineyard Wine & Spirits at Arlington’s Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall to its list of local stockists. Shabo wines are also served at area restaurants such as La Fromagerie Cheese and Wine Bistro in Alexandria, Giorgio’s Family Restaurant in Montclair, Virginia, and Michelin-starred Imperfecto in D.C.