Terry Sieg, president of locally based beverage wholesaler J.W. Sieg & Company, has died at age 69. Smith Williams, Sieg’s son-in-law and president of J.W. Sieg Wines, says that Sieg’s passing was "a sudden death."
"Everybody is just terribly saddened," says Williams. "It’s an incredible tragedy for this family, the community, and anyone that knew him." Williams declined to comment on the cause of death or offer further statement.
Sergeant Darrell Byers says Albemarle County police responded to a call Monday morning at a residence in the 1200 block of Hammocks Gap Road, where Sieg owns a home. While police could not confirm the identification of the deceased because it is an open investigation, Byers says law enforcement is investigating what appears to be a suicide. Albemarle police are still awaiting the results of an autopsy, but no foul play is suspected at this time.
A funeral service for Sieg will be held at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Greenwood on Friday at 1:30pm.
Sieg’s father, James Wallace Sieg, started the family business in 1962. At the time, Terry Sieg was a student at UVA, where he also started at running back for the Cavaliers football team before graduating in 1964. In 1976, Sieg took over for his father, and also began to expand the company’s emergent wine portfolio.
Wine took a backseat to beer for several decades, as J.W. Sieg & Company became Central Virginia’s sole Anheuser-Busch distributor, a gig that gives Sieg exclusive distribution over brews from Bud Light to Starr Hill. However, Sieg returned to the wine business in 2008 when his company launched J.W. Sieg Wines.
During the past two decades, Sieg contributed upwards of $30,000 to Democratic political candidates—notably Creigh Deeds, during his unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign against Bob McDonnell in 2009. Sieg also served on the President’s Council of the Southern Environmental Law Center and, last year, committed $1 million to a network of schools in Africa founded by a UVA alum.