Sheana Davis

Sheana Davis was born in Sonoma, California, in 1969. Her grandfather Donald Davis was a professional chef who every Friday cooked meals from local produce and meats for farmers and ranchers at the Sonoma Grange, and she learned to cook beside him; by the fourth grade she was carving beef tongue and canning vegetables from his garden. She attended Altimira Middle School in Sonoma in the early 1980s.

Through a high school work experience program she was placed with the food writer M.F.K. Fisher, helping the elderly author with daily cooking and preparing food for gatherings at her Glen Ellen home. "I had no idea who she was," Davis recalled. "I called her Mary Frances and did whatever she said, which often meant making a lot of chicken stock." Months later she began working with Ig Vella of Vella Cheese Co., who remained her mentor until his death in 2011. A knife and paper hat of his hung framed in her office.

Davis completed the two-year Culinary Arts program at Santa Rosa Junior College in 1988. That year she came across the Commander's Palace cookbook and went on to intern at Commander's Palace in New Orleans, an experience she described as magical. She returned to New Orleans often throughout her life as a guest chef. She later became a licensed cheese educator.

After returning to Sonoma Davis catered events and in 1992 founded The Epicurean Connection, originally a business marketing artisan cheeses and beverages to chefs and retailers, with early clients including Straus Family Creamery and Cowgirl Creamery.

In 2005 she opened The Epicurean Connection shop in Boyes Hot Springs, in the space where her grandfather had run a business decades before. The shop outgrew itself and in 2011 moved to downtown Sonoma, where it became a cheese shop and cafe; Sunset named it one of the top 50 local food shops in California. In September 2015 she sold the cafe to restaurateur Manuel Azevedo, who reopened it as Tasca Tasca, so that she could concentrate on cheese production, catering and education.

She began making cheese in 2010. Delice de la Vallee, a fresh cheese of cow's and goat's milk, won first place in its category at the 2010 American Cheese Society competition, and she followed it with Creme de Fromage, a triple cream cow's milk cheese. By 2016 she was making about 500 pounds a week at a Berkeley cooperative, supplying clients such as Kendall-Jackson and Thomas Keller's restaurants.

She taught cheesemaking and cooking classes in person and, from 2020, online; worked as a cheese educator with the U.S. Dairy Export Council; founded the Sonoma Valley Cheese Conference and the Winter Artisan Cheese Fair; and in 2016 was named curator of M.F.K. Fisher's last house in Glen Ellen. In 2023 she published Buttermonger with her daughter Karina.

Davis had her daughter Karina in 1992, at 23, and raised her as a single mother, for a time living with her in New Orleans and Point Arena before settling in the Sonoma house she said she bought by selling cheese. Her neighbour, Hanzell winemaker Bob Sessions, introduced her to his son Ben Sessions, a wine educator; they married on 23 January 2016 at the Sebastiani Theatre in Sonoma, with her father walking her down the aisle to the Imperial March, and honeymooned at Dollywood. Friends remembered her as a petite woman, about five feet tall, with a firecracker personality and a keen NASCAR fan; in 2016 she won a fan tailgating contest at the Sonoma raceway. She shared her home with her cats Spicoli and Fat Ass.

Davis believed food should bring a whole community to the table. She designed recipes that could be made with ingredients available through EBT, SNAP and WIC programs, baked for a teen Queer Art Club, and taught young cooks at the Sonoma Community Center and Teen Center. Of the No Pay Cafe she said: "All tides rise together. If we all do good in our community, our community will be a better place."

Davis is remembered as a builder of Sonoma's artisan cheese culture and as one of the valley's most generous community cooks. The No Pay Cafe she started during the 2017 wildfires served about 200,000 meals in its first twelve weeks and went on feeding seniors and families through the pandemic and the 2025 SNAP interruption. Fellow food people called her a trailblazer and a powerhouse, and her family asked that she be remembered by feeding people and making sure those who struggle are included. A memorial fund was set up for a bench in her honour and for donations to hunger relief and youth programs.

First place, Fresh Unripened Mixed Milk category, American Cheese Society competition 2010, for Delice de la Vallee. The Epicurean Connection named one of the top 50 local food shops in California by Sunset (2012). Delice de la Vallee listed by Saveur among the best cheeses for cheeseburgers (2014). Nathan's Ultimate Fan tailgating contest winner at the Sonoma raceway (2016).

Davis appeared on Reinventing the Meal with Richard Blais on the Cooking Channel (2012), on California Bountiful, on Experience Sonoma Valley's Sonoma Live and Sonoma Spiel programmes, on the Varietal Show, and on The Food Enthusiast podcast discussing Buttermonger. Her own channel hosted cheesemaking classes and Cheese Chat interviews with figures such as Ari Weinzweig.

Davis lived for several years with stage IV esophageal cancer. In January 2025 friends held Sheanapalooza, a benefit at the Sonoma Community Center attended by more than 300 people. She died on the morning of 12 October 2026, aged 57, surrounded by her family. A celebration of life was planned for a later date, and a GoFundMe was organised to fund a memorial bench, medical and funeral costs, and donations to hunger and youth causes.