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E Ola! Hawaiian Wine and Spam Musubis

Usually I get Greek wine from my friends who live in Athens. But in December they gave me three wines from…Hawaii. Which isn’t as odd as it sounds since she’s from Hawaii. They’ve given me Hawaiian wine before (and you can read about that here!) but this time they went super cliché with both sparkling and still pineapple wine and a Symphony.

I know I couldn’t just drink these. They needed to have a proper pairing. Thanks to another Hawaiian friend (this one living in Istanbul) who had a Spam hook up, we created a proper Hawaiian feast. Or as close as we could get to one! Teriyaki Spam musubis, mochiko chicken, Japanese potato salad, coconut shrimp, and crab wonton dip. A green salad with grilled pineapple, avocado, and blue cheese and toasted coconut pudding rounded out the meal.

Maui Wine Hula o Maui

From the Maui Wine company (located, sensibly, on Maui), the Hula o Maui is made with 100% pineapple juice. They harvest slightly under-ripe Maui Gold pineapples, ferment them in stainless steel, and again in the bottle making this a traditional method sparkler. The wine rests in the lees for six to eight months before disgorgement.

Pale with and enthusiastically bubbly in the glass, the wine smelled redolent of … pineapple! No shocker there I suppose! The palate likewise was an explosion of both bubbles (no softness there) and pineapple with moderate alcohol at 12.5% abv. A complicated wine no, but charming and fun absolutely. We enjoyed this quite a lot.

More than merely fun to drink, the sparkling pineapple wine went remarkably well with all the food! Particularly the Spam musubis and coconut shrimp, although no surprise in that when you think about it.

Maui Wine Maui Blanc

Also made from 100% pineapple juice, the Maui Blanc was a surprise. Sadly, not as pleasant a surprise as the Hula o Maui. Very pale in the glass, platinum with green highlights, it smelled nothing like pineapple. The nose displayed very green aromas with pepinos, unripe melon, and cucumber.

According the bottle, this steel tank fermented wine is semi-dry with 11.5% alcohol. You wouldn’t know by tasting it that it were semi-dry. Blind tasting this wine would have been an interesting experiment. Even if I had thought it was a fruit wine, no way would I have suspected pineapple.

Pairing-wise it didn’t do too badly with some of the foods. The mochiko chicken held its own against it. But that said, we did not like this and did not finish it. If you’re curious about pineapple wine, go for the bubbles.

Volcano Winery Mele

Unlike Maui Wine, Volcano Winery sits on the Big Island. Wines here include both grape and fruit wine as well as a honey wine. The wine my friends brought me was a 100% Symphony wine, the first grape that Volcano Winery cultivated. Symphony was created in California and is a cross between Muscat of Alexandria and Grenache Gris. I’ve actually had it before. A couple few Maryland wineries use (or used it anyway) and I remember enjoying it so was excited to try this.

To start…sigh. This was a terrible label. Who thought that was a good idea? Especially as they gave the wine such a great name, ‘Mele’ means song.

Deep gold in the glass, this was not at all like my hazy memories of Maryland Symphony. Both the nose and palate here were straight up apple juice. Apple juice with 12% abv and likely residual sugar based on how weighty it felt on the palate. Not generally what I look for in a wine but I wasn’t entirely mad at it. This went with none of the food. Not at all. But it was still better than the previous wine! After the Maui Blanc things could only go up.