Table of Contents:
FRUIT WINE IN GENERAL.
ALASKA WINE.
SUMMARY.
Beers of Alaska. Alaska Spirits.
Alaska Wine
The summer weather in parts of Alaska seems similar to that in Washington state and Oregon. Both places make great wines. Unfortunately, the weather in Alaska turns too cold just about the time the grapes are ripening.
You can grow them indoors (greenhouse,) but grapevines usually need to be 6-10 feet apart. And from each vine, you will get enough grapes for 2-3 bottles. Depending on the grape’s size, a bottle of wine requires the juice from between 600 – 800 grapes. Without getting too deep into details, you need about 200 square feet per case (12 bottles) of wine. An acre will get you about 200 cases. That’s a large greenhouse.
Another option is to use grape juice concentrate from somewhere else, like Washington or Oregon. Like orange juice from concentrate tastes like orange juice, it doesn’t have the same pop as the fresh.
Or, use a different fruit instead of grapes. If you go to the very basics of wine, it is the fermenting of fruit. Any fruit with a sugar level high enough to convert to alcohol during the fermentation period can be wine.
When life hands you lemons, make limoncello. If you are in Alaska and berries are everywhere, make wine. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, even gooseberries go into Alaska wines. There are red and black currant wines and wines with rhubarb.
And with grafting, there will probably be a cold-weather Alaska grape someday.
So Why is Wine From Grapes More Prevalent?
Grapes have a design for making wine. They have a natural balance of sugars, acids, and tannins. There is very little they need to do to the grape juice between the squeezing and the bottling. You need to balance the sugar, acid, or tannin levels with most other fruit wines before you ferment them.
Fruit Wines in general.
Fruit wines can range from very sweet to semisweet, and some are not very sweet at all.
They may be the juice of just one fruit or a mixture. There is strawberry rhubarb wine, but what about Chardonnay and rhubarb? Merlot and raspberry? They exist and are not bad.
And just as there are numerous varieties of apples, there are multiple varieties of apple wine. The sweet apple tastes different than a tart green apple.
Some fruit wines add other natural flavors. Maple syrup, cinnamon, and ginseng are just a few.
Winemakers keep playing with fruit wines and expanding their world. They now make sparkling fruit wines, rich dessert wines, port-style sipping wines, and even brandies. What do you think the French have been making in Calvados for years?
But you do not have to go to France to taste fruit wines. Look in your back yard. I live in Southern Florida. There are no wineries in my neighborhood, but they use their local limes for wine in the Florida Keys. Hawaii has pineapple wine. How about apple pie wine in Michigan or Washington state?
Alaska Wine Specifically
You will find a few Alaska wineries that import grape concentrate (chardonnay, merlot) to mix with local fruit. And some import other fruit concentrates to mix or supplement a small harvest.
As you will see, this is no Napa Valley. The few wineries are rather far apart. Currently, there is no Alaska wine trail.
Grape Wines
Although a few wineries do grow grapes, as of 2019, none were selling wines from 100% Alaska grape juice.
- Alaska Denali Winery (Anchorage) – specializes in making tailored wines. By mixing different grape concentrates, they blend a wine specifically for you. They also offer tastings of their house wines. Reservations are necessary.
Grape and Fruit Wines
- Bear Creek Winery (Homer) – Has several grape wines with fruit wine infusions. Merlot with blueberry, white zin with blueberry, resiling with peach and apricot are some of the past pairings. They also produce several wines from berries only.
Fruit Wines
- Alaska Berries (Soldotna, Kenai Peninsula) – is a berry farm with a winery. They are currently the only winery in Alaska, making fruit wines with 100% grown in Alaska fruit. The farm is more than two hours from Anchorage on the road to Homer. Contact the farm for stores that sell their wine if you are not going near the farm.
Mead
Natural ingredients with enough sugar can become alcohol. Fermenting honey, water, and yeast into an alcoholic beverage goes back thousands of years. They call it mead
- Alaska Meadery (Talkeetna) – begins with mead and then adds local fruits and spices. Flavor combinations include a red with raspberries, sour cherries and apples, and a golden with coriander and bitter orange peel.
There may or may not be wineries in Kenai and on Kodiak Island. Unfortunately, with short seasons, many small operations live from harvest to harvest. And some do not have websites or keep them current.
Alaska Wine Summary
With just over 700,000 residents, there’s not a massive market for Alaska winemakers. Also, wine is not a traditional drink in Alaska. Up until it became a state in the 1950s, it was more of a beer and whiskey crowd.
Growing grapes is not easy in Alaska. And it certainly isn’t cheap.
With ships arriving in Alaska ports from California, Oregon, and Washington, great wine is plentiful.
Most people only go to Alaska once, so see and taste as much as possible.
In Anchorage and Fairbanks, there are liquor warehouses that may carry some of the Alaska wines.
Most of the wineries are seasonal and are not open every day of the week. Check their website by clicking on the orange links above or contacting the wineries. Some are by reservation only.
If you can, taste Alaska wine.