Winemaker Jason Davis grew up in Kasilof and Soldotna, gardening and keeping bees while still in high school. In 2008, while his family was living in Malta on assignment with the U.S. Foreign Service, he began making natural wine from organically grown Merlot grapes.
Beginning in 2010, he refined his craft in Sicily using Nerello Mascalese grapes from the family’s small vineyard on Mount Etna. Just up the road was the winery of Frank Cornelissen, a pioneer of the natural wine movement.
When the family relocated to Homer, where summers are too cool for wine grapes, Jason assumed his winemaking days were over. Then he began imagining something distinctly Alaskan: combining fireweed honey from his beehives with local berries and fruit to create natural wines that express the terroir of the southern Kenai Peninsula.
He began experimenting immediately, cultivating local yeasts capable of fermenting honey-and-berry must into full-bodied wines that capture the extraordinary flavors and aromas of Southcentral Alaska. A visit to Frankfurt in 2018 introduced another inspiration: apfelwein, a bright, dry cider fermented from freshly pressed apples.
