Towards a Hawaiian way of wine

From the chapter: Culinary matters

The following piece reflects a specific time and place. Yet when read today,  the thoughts are still apropos to everything going on in the food, wine and restaurant world. It was originally published in 1995 in a hospitality industry magazine called Hawaii Foodservice News, for which I penned a monthly industry-eyes-only column (between 1984 and 1998). Keep in mind that by 1995, there was a chef driven movement called Hawaii Regional Cuisine, already in full flower and garnering significant international acclaim, making a huge impact on how we conducted business. Hence, this one case-study of how wine can come to be defined in any dynamic, culturally influenced culinary process.

In the preface of Jocelyn Fujii's book on Hawaiian homes, Under the Hula Moon, Paul Theroux offers this surprising insight on the Polynesian explorers' outlook on the world:

The Pacific is full of ancient named waterways—the paths to other island archipelagos. One stretch of water in Hawaii is called Kealaikahiki, the Way to Tahiti (2500 miles away). But this is subtle business, because water gives the ideal illusion of emptiness—while appearing to be nothing, it is everything and contains all possibilities.

In this sense, the Pacific Ocean is seen not so much as a barrier around the Hawaiian islands, but almost as part of the landscape itself—a vast, inviting extension of the land.

In recent years, our own business of new Hawaiian cooking has expanded in such a dramatic fashion that we have begun to question the validity of some of our formulations—such as "Pacific Rim," "Euro-Asian," and even the officially recognized "Hawaiian Regional Cuisine." Regional in what sense? The fact is, so eclectic is our ethnic soup that our cooking has gone far beyond the Pacific and become more of a global cuisine, as perceived through our own Island perspective. Distance is no barrier. The world, so to speak, has become our oyster.

In this respect, one simply cannot define our emerging Island cooking strictly by its use of locally produced foodstuffs. The benefits of localism are inherent, but the idea is also limiting, even chauvinistic—almost as bad when I first started in the business in the 1970s, when anything "good" couldn't possibly come from Hawaii, but had to come from some place faraway, like the mainland U.S.A., Europe or Asia.

If anything, our cooking is finally reaching a point where we can accept not only the diversity of our ethnicity and cultures, but also the legitimacy of the mix. I've always liked the way the French born Chef Jean-Marie Josselin described in his A Taste of Hawaii  how he first began to grasp local Island cooking:

For one meal, I would see a Hawaiian cook mixing Japanese and Chinese vegetables with Asian and Polynesian spices, making a Portuguese style bean soup or seafood stew using mahimahi and squid, and frying Puerto Rican style banana fritters... I watched the choreographic displays of chopping and grilling, basting and baking, sir frying, broiling and other forms of rapid cooking...

The free-form backyard style that we all grew up with, and had long taken for granted or even dismissed, "dazzled" Josselin, and rejuvenated his own French approach to cooking.

With wines, slowly but surely, we've also learned to make full use of this sense of freedom and to put aside our preconceived notions of the past concerning what constitutes "fine wine" or the best wines for our cuisine, whether done at home, at backyard parties or in restaurants. What we've had to do is essentially expand our repertoire far beyond the "classic" varietals—the Cabernet Sauvignon of Bordeaux, the Chardonnay of Burgundy, et al.—that were once completely appropriate for the traditional, and frankly narrow, quasi-European "continental" style dining predominant in our restaurants and hotels seemingly just yesterday.

It began in the late 1970s when California premiums began to establish a dominance on our wine lists that continues today. New regions beget new attitudes; and so now, in the 1990s, our perspective is definitely more expansive. There is a wider range of wines to choose from, coming from everywhere, and even bearing an "everywhereness" of taste well suited to global-influenced foods. Cooking is no longer the same in Hawaii, and neither is it in California, New York, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany or Italy. Is it surprising that the wines we all drink with our foods are more varied in style and content?

In the context of many new cuisines, neither "big" nor "classic" are no longer the criteria for how we write our wine lists; and even price, big or small, is no longer a measure of quality. What I'm talking about is the continuously purer and more expressive Sauvignon Blancs from places as far-flung as New Zealand, the Loire Valley and Lake County. Sleek, shiny, unbelievably snappy Chardonnays from Western Australia, Oregon or Washington. Drier, kinder Rieslings from Germany, or austere, amazingly food-versatile Rieslings from South Australia. The rediscovery of myriads of French "country" wines. Amazing revisions of Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir and Pinot Blanc from Oregon, Germany's overlooked Baden region, and Italy's Umbria or Alto-Adige. And an evolving international thirst for traditional Mediterranean varietals—such as Sangiovese, Syrah, Tempranillo, Garnacha or Cannonau, Vermentino or Verdejo, Albariño or Arneis, and more, much more—that cast a strikingly Mediterraneanish light on even our own, supposedly unique gastronomy of the Pacific.

As well they should. Precisely like contemporary foods, the sheer variety of contemporary wines certainly makes for more fun; and hopefully, for healthier business and more sensible societal attitudes. The more open-minded we are about wines and cuisines, the better off we are about everything, from the arts to culture.

Which is not to say that our future will be as simple as ABC ("Anything But Chardonnay" or "Cabernet"). Earlier this year I sat down in a bustling wine bar in Melbourne, in the middle of one of my usual trips, looking for wines in all the right places. I was a little tired after a week of barramundi, yabbies, bay bugs, emu and kangaroo filets, and craved something more familiar. There are no cheeseburgers in Melbourne (far as I know), but I did order a simple, grilled t-bone of beef, which came slathered with a huge, melting lump of old fashioned, herbed, maître d' style butter. To go with it, I ordered a bottle of one of Australia's new, cool climate style Pinot Noirs, which was quite good (crisp, buoyant, intoxicatingly spicy) but still, on the light and easy drinking side—I washed down the entire bottle before finishing the steak. So to make it to the end, I ordered a glass of a more traditional, whopper style Cabernet Sauvignon; and suddenly, all the familiar elements of the varietal—the tannin, the oak, the round shoulders and meaty textures, and the heady, herbaceous, eminently winey character—seemed to grab ahold of the beef with a force that no Pinot Noir ever could, and melted endlessly between the buttery, charred grains.

The message that this faraway experience hammered home for me, once again, is that there will always be a place for the tried-and-true "classics"—be it a buxom Cabernet or opulent Chardonnay, a warm and zesty Zinfandel, or even a sweet, sprightly Mosel Riesling—with the unfolding cuisine of the Islands, and perhaps even elsewhere. The last time we checked, after all, the world was still round. It is no wonder that the faster and farther you go, the sooner you arrive back to the things that worked all along!