Katla Wines is me, Jas Swan. I founded Katla in 2019, making free, untraditional and energetic wines exactly how I want them to be. I was originally based in Mosel, but found my happy place and own place in Rheinhessen, Woellstein since 2022. I hand harvest organic and organic-conversion grapes from Andi Mann, Piri Naturel, Lukas Krauss and Niklas Rückrich as well as my own with my team of likeminded souls. We work manually, breaking our backs for a mindful and reviving end product. This work 90% of people around me do with the support of a full family system, I do this alone and with the help of my friends. I like making wines free of tradition, and being able to create whatever I feel like. I don’t always make the same wines either, it all depends on grape availability and also on my emotions.
I don’t come from a family winery or winemaking background, Katla is all my own. As a female winemaker I get treated like an underdog…and I like that position, it gives me heaps of space for creativity. If no one expects anything, you can only shine, right?
This lack of expectation also gives me the opportunity to build a company that is not purely based on my benefit as a privileged white woman—I work with LGBTQIA+ charities and groups with fundraising wine auctions (most recently for Budapest Pride,) Katla is the sponsor for Bordeaux Drag Games too. I create accessible tasting and bottle swapping events to enable more people from all backgrounds to get into wine, and I give out free Katla condoms everywhere I go because safety is fundamental.
My former flatmate James The Creature is a drag queen and in 2020 we worked together to represent drag queens and their culture on my labels. I support them, they support me, it’s a beautiful and fabulous symbiosis and I am proud to show their art.
I work with other artists too: musician Olafur Arnalds, the painter Baldur Helgason and now upcoming Alison Mossheart, a painter and the lead singer of The Kills. I also create the labels for my wines myself, using my photography as concepts for the finished designs.
Foraging also is an essential part of Katla Wines. Infusing herbs with wines makes my heart jump and is a way for me to connect to land on a completely different level, living in tune with the season and along with nature instead of implementing onto nature by pure agriculture.
I want to change the boundaries of winemaking and conception of wine, create ways to have a more inclusive wine world that is less pretentious, more fun and invites people in, instead of intimidating people.
I think change is in our hands, bit by bit. I can’t change the world, but I can help to change my direct surroundings. Using wine to change the world is a unique way to do it, but I love wine and hate injustice. It makes sense to me!