Aloha Means Good Wine

I'll be the first to admit, I'm a wine novice. I like it, but I have trouble categorizing exactly what I like. I don't like Sauvignon Blanc, it gave me a hangover once. White Zins bore me. Cabernet Sauvignon is a bit too red. But other than that, I'm game. I play it by the book when it comes to wine/food pairings.

In my naivety, I like wines from all over the world...Francie, Italy, Cali, Chile, Aussie,...and Maui. Took a trip to Maui (for obvious reasons) a few years ago, and per a coworker recommendation, stopped by a local winery for the daily tour. What kind of grapes to they grow there? None. It's pineapple wine. Why not?

The winery is everything you'd want in term of experience. It's 2000 feet up toward Haleakala National Park. You might think of Hawaii's beaches as the signature terrain, but at 10,000 feet, Haleakala stretches 1000+ feet higher than the highest point in Texas (peak usually not visible from shore b/c of clouds). But the drive up is picturesque to say the least, not often you feel the need to pull over every mile or so for yet another breathtaking view of the shore. There's a nice grocery store nearby to grab some lunch, it came highly recommended to grab something for the winery on-site picnic tables to enjoy with some of the wine samples. More on that in a minute.

The layout of the winery was as beautiful (as one would expect in the foothills of an isle like Maui) and the tour was appropriate in length and detail.

Random winery tank

Unfortunately, the tasting room was a distance from the picnic tables and it wasn't exactly easy to enjoy a shotglass sample with the box lunch. We should have popped our purchased wine on site (can't remember if that was legally an option) but in any event, it seemed anticlimactic to enjoy a nice sandwich lunch in the garden under the oak tree at a beautiful winery with a breathtaking view of the southeast shore with everything rain-kissed green in every direction you looked (in the perpetual 80 degree weather) without sipping on a glass of the Maui wine!




The view from the winery ain't bad

As for a wine review, we stuck with a white, the Maui Blanc. All samples were good, we just weren't enough of wine people to go past the samples on the rest. The Blanc was fruity and tasty and not too dry. While buying wine from the winery is a nice gesture and in the spirit of free tours, the bottles are widely available for a more competitive price at any local grocery store on the island.

As an aside, there is a beautiful Botanical Garden (Kula) on the drive up or back depending on your route. A well spent small fee for a great sample of local flora.