This month's festival pick...

Hawaii's Winter Wine Escape

By Patrick Totty

Big Island festival matches wine, food, views and lore

Sitting around the kitchen counter at Cultural Travels Central one day, we asked ourselves, “What would a great food-oriented festival look like that’s exotic, but doesn’t involve riding a camel, crash-learning a foreign language or taking a series of shots?”

Obviously those conditions reduced our choices to an English-speaking site somewhere in the First World. But who would consider the U.S., Canada, Britain or Australia all that exotic?

Then we had a “Doh!” moment and realized that Hawaii is pretty exotic, even if it is an American state, and that maybe we could find a good food festival there.

We did. Actually, a wine festival with a superb food and educational component. It’s called the Annual Winter Wine Escape, and it will present its 10^th edition November 14-16, 2002, at the Hapuna Beach Prince and the Mauna Kea Ranch hotels on the Kohala Coast of the big island of Hawaii.

We’re no fools; we know that the event probably started off 10 years ago as a shoulder season room filler. But the festival’s sponsors have stayed with the concept, patiently building on it and developing it into a serious affair that combines educational and culinary presentations, and top chefs and vintners with magnificent seaside scenery at two opulent resort settings.

The celebrity chef line-up includes some of the brightest stars in the U.S. culinary world, including, Gerald Hirigoyen (Fringale) and Hubert Keller (Fleur de Lys) from San Francisco, Tom Colicchio (Gramercy Tavern & Craft) and Anita Lo (Annisa) from New York City, and Dominique Tougne (Bistro 110) and Randy Zweiban (Nacional 27) from Chicago.

Over the three days, the chefs will create and explain dishes to compliment wines from seven different sources: California, Washington, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and Portugal/Madeira. Notable names from each include Chalone, Grgich Hills, Jordan and Stage’s Leap Wine Cellars from California; Domaines Barons de Rothschild and Maison Louis Latour from France; Badia Aa Coltibuono (Tuscany), Felesco (Lazio), Taurino (Apulia) and Stella (Umbria) from Italy.

The California wines, especially, have some heavy-duty presences. Chalone pioneered the use of Burgundian vinicultural methods to produce pinot noirs that could finally rival their French counterparts in bouquet and complexity. The stunning 1976 upset of the five First Growth clarets of Bordeaux by a Stag’s Leap cabernet sauvignon at a Paris tasting forever altered the world’s impression (and expectations) of U.S. wines.

The festival has scheduled nine events over its three-day span, starting with an opening night reception where guests will sample offerings from 50 wineries. Seminars, which will include tastings, will cover such topics as organic winemaking, French cuisine, home entertainment and terroir, the French concept that a particular place and plot of earth can imbue a wine with a unique and inimitable taste.

There will also be two grand social events, including a formal dinner cooked by the guest chefs and a final round of tasting.

Wine, haute cuisine, Hawaiian beaches, two classy resort hotels, a blending of the serious and the frivolous – there may be other combinations just as good, but none better.

Go here for the festival’s web site: http://winterwineescape.com/