Spirit of Aloha | Features | September/October 2005

In Wine Is Still Truth
By Rita Ariyoshi

Looking for a Bordeaux in all the right places

Anyone can aspire to epicurism at those prices, so quite naturally and unintentionally I became the worst sort of wine snob—a fussy but ignorant one. I bought without thought, often going to the wine caves with my own big glass jug for a fill-up. People arrived with all sorts of containers, including what looked like large plastic petrol bottles. We’d leave the cool oak-smelling darkness with our elixir, bidding Au revoir, until next week.

With such a salubrious background, which I took for granted at the time, I came to claim that I could spot a French wine from among dozens of domestics in a blind tasting, and for many years I got away with it. I recall a wine-tasting party on Moloka‘i where I smugly proclaimed there was only one European wine in the lot, and I was right. It was a Portuguese Douro. Portuguese wine, you may laugh, but, hey, this was Moloka‘i. And don’t laugh until you’ve tried the Douro Quinta do Crasto with pipi kaula.

Lately, however, I have been upbraided by fine Washington state wines and betrayed by slummy chateaus. There are California reds that would dazzle a Rothschild and whites that make me think of sitting under a floppy sun hat on the stony beach of Villefranche, my favorite little town on the Riviera, watching the yachts of the world tie up and everybody come ashore in their Yves Saint Laurent sailing togs for big bowls of rich bouillabaisse, brimming with shiny black mussels. The beautiful people spent all evening flirting over their wine, their jewels flashing with each lift of the glass.

Imagine the boost to my oenophilic ego, many years later, when Honolulu’s acclaimed culinary wizard, George Mavrothalassitis, invited me to his Chef Mavro restaurant to help him decide which wines should be paired with each item on his seasonal menu. Chef Mavro is from the south of France, Marseille, just down the coast from Villefranche. I assumed he asked me because of our shared background of wine caves and petrol cans. The truth is, before he introduces a new menu to his faithful patrons, the chef invites his staff and various wine experts, including his own sommelier, Brian Geiser, to a debut luncheon. Dozens of wines are paraded out and voted upon for the restaurant’s famous pairings. As it turned out, I was invited because the master chef likes to have a few average Joes (or Ritas) among the judges just to see what the masses might choose in the absence of beer or fruit punch.

I arrived to find three long tables, 22 places in all, set with spotless white linen, no flowers or frivolity. It looked like we were in for either lunch or surgery. Gingerly, with proper awe as before God or fine wine, we seated ourselves. Seven stemmed glasses were set before each of us. Silver ice buckets appeared in the middle where protea and candles usually rested. These would serve as receptacles for our swill. You could tell the serious sommeliers because they plunked down their own individual buckets by their feet for all the gargling, swirling and spitting that characterizes their noble profession. The chef instructed us, in his thick Gallic accent, “We are looking for the best pairing, not necessarily the best wine.” I breathed a little easier at the lowered bar.

Chef Mavro described each menu item as it was served. The first, a salad of Kahuku shrimp, inspired a lesson in etymology. The chef said, “The British call shrimp ‘prawns.’” Then perhaps recalling the bitter French and Indian War, during which America slid irretrievably from haute cuisine into the column of fish and chips and mutton stew, he sneered, “The British just don’t do things like other people.” Hawai‘i has further muddied the water, he added, by defining saltwater shrimp as “shrimp” and freshwater shrimp as “prawns.” We sampled two flights of four wines each for the Kahuku shrimp. I learned that sets are called “flights,” in wine-speak. I voted for No. 3, which turned out to be an Oregon Pinot Gris. Oregon! Mon Dieu.

Next we were served foie gras with red currents imported from France. For an aloha flair, it was served with Maui onions caramelized in a vinaigrette syrup with li hing mui. No one was sure if li hing mui called for red or white wine. After trying 10 wines, the Sancerre won my nod.

The catch of the day was Hawaiian sea bass, bringing on another nomenclature crisis since it’s actually a deep-sea grouper. It came with sea urchin sabayon and a puffed rice cake that scattered like buckshot at the touch of a fork. The waiters in our group announced they would have to have Dirt Devils if they were going to deal with the puffed rice. Modifications were promised. I cast my ballot for a French Chablis.

When it came to the Keāhole lobster à la coque, Chef Mavro said, “We use only female lobsters because they are fatter in the tail.” He insists on females also for the Barbary duck entrée because “the breast is more tender.” He explained that the French are very particular in how they remove feathers from the duck so that the skin, when cooked, is especially crispy. It was more information than I needed and didn’t sound very kind.

Any culinary artist worth his salt can’t afford sentimentality. Chef Mavro mused: “It’s hard for me to go to the zoo. I’m always looking at the animals and thinking about what sauces and wines would go with them.”

I tried to keep tears from falling in my wine and sullying the results. Sniffling, I chose a California Chardonnay for the lobster and a rich red wine from Lebanon for the duck.

Brian the sommelier’s approach to the wine project was vastly different from mine. My method was to eat a bite of lamb, sip a wine, have another bite and go on to another wine. Brian ate his entire entrée, then took on the wine, glass by glass, swirling and spitting. He said he is gifted with sustainable memory. “My mouth remembers the lamb.” I told him my great-grandmother had such a memory. She remembered actually seeing Abraham Lincoln.

Brian also had perfect trajectory, scoring in the bucket with every spit. I asked him why he gargled his wine. “There are four basic tastes,” he said. “Sweet is on the tip of the tongue, sour on the sides, salt farther back and bitter at the back of the tongue just before the swallow.”

By now drunk with power if not wine, I selected a French Bordeaux for the lamb, because the entrée was served in a curried garlic sauce that called for a certain assertiveness in the wine pairing. Besides, it was a magnificent wine. Even an average Joe (or Rita) could tell this.

Chef Mavro clicked his tongue loudly. It was something that would have caused my mother to send me away from the table. “It intensifies the flavor,” he explained. What did Mother know? All she ever drank was Mogen David.

Thus genetically handicapped in the matter of wine, I managed to pick winners for only two courses, the lobster and the lamb, and the lamb was easy, because the wine that warmed my heart sells for $28 a glass when purchased à la carte.

I learned one very helpful thing about wine in the course of the afternoon: If you’re going to suck crack seed at the table, according to the general consensus, li hing mui goes best with white wine, in this case a 1999 Cadillac French Bordeaux

. We sampled 120 wines that day. Lunch ended at 4 o’clock

. Chef Mavro sometimes takes his tastings on the road. He recently presided at a Food and Wine Lovers Weekend at a bed-and-breakfast in Honoka‘a, on the Big Island of Hawai‘i. The first evening was all about fungi. Bog and Janice Stanga of Hāmākua Mushrooms brought strangely beautiful bouquets of rare mushrooms, which were translated into various pūpū and paired with wines.

Alvin Wakayama, third-generation owner of Kamuela Liquors, reputed to be the finest wine store in the Islands, selected the wines. Like me, he prefers French wines just on general principle and goes to France to select “small domains.” To accompany the mushrooms, he chose a flinty, dry Sancerre from Chateau Verdigny in the Loire Valley, a Chardonnay from Burgundy, a Bordeaux with, as he said, “earthy, leathery horsey notes” and the sole non-French vintage, a Northern Rhone Sirah, with “a peppery edge.” Don’t you just love his adjectives?

Alvin pointed out: “Wine was never part of our American culture. We are the only modern country to ban alcohol as evil. When my grandfather opened the liquor store, he sold Italian Swiss Colony wine in gallon bottles. Mondavi came in the late ’60s. Before that it was all jug wines. In the early ’80s, the market shifted. Americans read and tasted. They educated themselves.” He still has grave reservations. “California wineries inject oak flavor, acidity, any flavor they want,” he says. “Technology is so perfected you can have a Chardonnay without grapes.”

Asked what was the best glass of wine he ever tasted, without hesitation he said, “A 1947 Chateau Margot Vogue.”

Chef Mavro’s best glass was a 1947 Chevalle blanc. “It’s $5,000 a bottle and you get five glasses in a bottle,” he said.

The Honoka‘a festivities included farm visits. At the Hawai‘i Island Goat Dairy we sampled the smoothest-ever goat cheese. Dick and Heather Threlfall are passionate about their goats. Their animals dine on the vegetation of bamboo, ti, ginger, macadamia nut leaves and plain old grass. Heather kept herself between Chef Mavro and her pet pig, Otis, 450 pounds of pork chops on the hoof.

We met Richard Spiegel at Volcano Island Honey Co., producer of a rare white opalescent honey from a single grove of kiawe trees nourished by thermal water flowing under the roots. He’s appeared on the Discovery Channel’s Epicurious. He’s a former Washington, D.C., lawyer who quit the bar and headed west in a VW bus in the ’60s. “I go down the rows of hives at night and listen to all the life,” he said. “Deep within the sound is me.” Last year, Spiegel produced 38,000 pounds of honey.

The next day, Chef Mavro taught us all how to cook with the ingredients we had gathered. We needed no lessons in the eating department. Wine, naturally, was paired with each course. The chef is doing another weekend Dec. 2, 3 and 4.

One of the best things to happen to wine since the dogma of Transubstantiation was the hit film Sideways. Suddenly everyone wanted Pinot Noir, and they knew how to pronounce it.

I followed the Sideways wine road through California’s Santa Ynez Valley, northwest of Los Angeles, not far from Santa Barbara. My friend, who shares my snobbery but has a little knowledge to rest it upon, passed up any winery with a tour bus in front. The pourer at Blackjack Ranch bragged, “We were in Sideways for three and a half seconds.”

At Lincourt Vineyards we sampled a 2003 Rosé of Cabernet Sauvignon with notes of ripe strawberry and cherry that the pourer assured us would “dance across your mouth and tango down your throat.” I said I preferred a quiet wine that just sits in the glass until I want it. We were asked if we could detect in the 2002 Pinot Noir Rancho Santa Rosa hints of blueberry jam and cola. Mercifully, we couldn’t. It was excellent. We bought a bottle at $38, and served it later with teri-burgers at a Hawai‘i Kai barbecue. It elevated the evenin.

Hawai‘i has its own winery, with a tasting room, on the cool upper slopes of Haleakalā, Maui. Tedeschi Winery, at ‘Ulupalakua Ranch, has been growing California and European grapes since 1974, producing fine still and sparkling wines. Don’t pay any attention to the pineapple wine, except to accompany chocolate chip cookies.

To show how serious Maui has become about wine, Vino Italian Tapas & Wine Bar at Kapalua Resort offers 17 wines by the glass, plus three flights of three glasses each. You won’t see people sniffing, swirling and spitting here. They’re too busy enjoying the wine and the “small-plate” food. Vino, the baby of sommelier Chuck Furuya and partners, has a Honolulu location at Restaurant Row. At pau hana time, it vibrates with the noise, bustle and life of a Tuscan trattoria or an enoteca, an Italian wine bar. For one price, you get to sample three wines. I had a trio of Italian reds, a 1999 Dolcetto, Clerico Visaldi; 1997 Valpolicella, Arana; and 1999 Cavaliere Michele Satta. The selection and the menu change almost daily.

When I’m buying wine for dinner or gifts, I head for Tamura’s in Kaimukï. I’ve been loyal since the Christmas I bought my son-in-law a wine rack and wanted to give it to him filled. I was actually steered to French wines less expensive than my initial selection because they were, I was assured, “better, regardless of price.”

Lianne Fu and Kim Karalovich, owners of The Wine Shop, housed in an old plantation house at 1809 S. King St., carry 400 different wines, grouped, as Kim explained, “by body type,” the lighter Pinot Noirs distinct from the full-bodied Cabernets. “Our concept is to empower the buyer,” Kim said. “We have free tastings every Saturday from noon to four and seminars once or twice a month. We have guest lecturers and classes for beginners.”

The best advice I have received on wine came from Brian Geiser, who said, “Ask for help. Even waiters in casual restaurants know what other people like and what sells. They have an opinion.”

How did Brian get to be such an expert? He smiled and said, “I just started drinking.”                         

RITA ARIYOSHI is a multiple winner of the Lowell Thomas travel journalism awards. She is also a recipient of the Pushcart Prize for literature. Her story in the May/June 2004 issue of SPIRIT OF ALOHA, “The Kiss of the Mango,” recently won an Excellence in Journalism first-place award from the Society of Professional Journalists Hawai‘i chapter.

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