By The Glass
CHUCK FURUYA
Island ‘home’ winemakers
have come a long wayThe Hawaiian Wine Circle is a small and very committed group of "home" winemakers. It is quite an interesting assortment of people.
Since the mid-80s, I have been asked to judge their annual wine competition. This wasn't such an easy task in the early years, as the wines were made for quaffing, rather than judging. They included a wide array of base ingredients, from the unusual (dandelion to cactus flower to brown rice) to the more common (pineapple, lilikoi or lychee).
These days, thanks to a new generation of winemakers, the wines have grown remarkably and surprisingly good. Last year's Best of Show, for instance, was an intensely concentrated, purely flavored surinam cherry wine, produced by Helen Plumley of Kaaawa. It had a wonderful flow and finish.
This year, fellow judges Alan Mosher (a wine enthusiast) and Mark Shishido (manager of Alan Wong's Pineapple Room) joined me in selecting as Best of Show a most incredible mango wine by Frank Pawlowski of Mililani.
To get the intensity and concentration he wanted, Frank used 49 pounds of ripe Hayden mango to make this small batch. It tasted resoundingly of mangoes -- we could even taste the skin! This was quite a leap in quality from the ol' days, that's for sure.
People have asked why I judge this event rather than a competition on the mainland, such as the San Francisco or Orange County fairs or the National Restaurant Show. The answer is quite simple. I learn. And, I feel.
Judging these wines takes me back to the basics of wine-tasting. If a wine is produced from surinam cherry, it should taste like surinam cherry, beginning to end. It should be long on the finish, with no alcoholic aftertaste or bitterness.
I also enjoy the passion of these winemakers.
And I have met wonderful wine lovers, from all facets of life. Pawlowski, for instance, repairs car bodies by day. Bob Cramer, another inspired winemaker, is a cameraman for one of the television stations. And the list goes on.
I would like to close with a remembrance of a winemaker I admired most, Bill Hassler. I was very sad to hear of his recent death, but it was a great surprise (and quite touching) to learn that two of his wines were entered in this year's competition. I was proud for him that both were awarded silver medals.
I met Bill a few years back while filming a piece on home wine storage for chef Roy Yamaguchi's "Hawaii Cooks" public television show. The piece documented how Bill had redesigned some used refrigerators to store wines at his house.
What intrigued me even more, however, was Bill's collection of wines. He had no Wine Spectator/Robert Parker trophy wines. Each selection was very interesting and almost eccentrically unique. I know of only a few people with such a fascinating eye. And he had a story for each selection. We spent the whole afternoon talking story and I left truly inspired.
I don't think I have ever met anyone who enjoyed wine or was as passionate about it as Bill. Each time we tasted wine together, I could see the thrill in his eyes. He seemed like a kid in a candy store, with a look of utter wonderment. It reminded me of a house cat at a picture window, looking out and day-dreaming.
I always found his love for wine pure and quietly contagious. To Bill Hassler ... thank you ... with much aloha.
Chuck Furuya is president of Fine Wine Imports and Hawaii's only master sommelier.
This column is a weekly lesson in wine
pairing written by a rotating panel of wine professionals.
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