Winemaker Jason Davis grew up in Kasilof and Soldotna, where he gardened and kept bees in high school. In 2008 he started making natural wines from organically-grown merlot grapes in Malta, where he and his family spent three years on assignment with the U.S. Foreign Service.
From 2010 he continued refining his technique in Sicily, with Nerello mascalese grapes from the family’s small vineyard on Mount Etna, inspired by Frank Cornelissen, a pioneer in the natural wine movement, whose winery was just up the road.
When the family relocated to Homer, Alaska, where summer temperatures are too low to ripen grapes, Jason assumed his wine-making days were over — until it occurred to him that by combining fireweed honey from his beehives with local berries and fruit, he might be able to create natural berry-based wines reflective of the “terroir” of the southern Kenai Peninsula.
He began experimenting immediately, eventually developing local yeast cultures capable of fermenting honey-berry musts to full-bodied 12% a.b.v. wines that vividly express the world-class flavors and aromas of south-central Alaska’s local fruit and berries. Along the way, on a September 2018 visit to Frankfurt, he discovered the glorious flavors and aromas of “apfelwein” — dry hard cider fermented from just-pressed fresh apples.
