We Can Find Wineries Everywhere

We're like a magnet for wine and wineries.  So when we found out there was a winery on Maui, one that makes pineapple wine no less... we knew we had to see it for ourselves. 

It's quite away from anything civilized, and that's part of it's charm.  We took windy roads to the winery which doesn't even have a physical address!  That's right we had to plug the coordinates into our GPS because they are so far in the middle of nowhere that there's no address.  But the views on the drive up were spectacular!

We're currently in Southwest Maui here, and I believe the smaller "island" is Turtle Bay where they have snorkeling expeditions and then the larger island in the distance I think is Kahoolawe (which isn't very large by the way).

Of course we had to get pictures of the scenery... our car and the landscape hehe

Only a mile up the road from those pictures we found the winery!

They have complementary tastings on four wines, but you're not allowed to buy a glass or consume them elsewhere on the property because of the type of license they have.  So instead we joined the tour of the premises.  They offer two free tours a day. 

The property was purchased somewhere around 1850 I believe and was used for sugar mills and a ranch.  The gentleman who owned it would brought hundreds of trees from around the world here, both things he bought and were gifted to him. 

In the 1980s I think it was Tedeschi (known for his winemaking in Sonoma) came to Hawaii to experiment with winemaking on Maui.  While grapes aren't plentiful, pineapples are, so came about the pineapple wine (they do have estate grown Syrah too, which we couldn't taste).

They have the barrels on the grounds, but cannot use oak barrels due to wood pests (which are responsible for ruining trees) so they use steel tanks.

The grounds were absolutely gorgeous!  So we set out to explore and have some fun.

When guests sailed in to visit the original ranch owners, they would shoot off this cannon to let them know they saw their ship arrived and would be down as quickly as possible to pick them up.  One of Hawaii's kings was known to visit and would stay in what is now the tasting room.  The distance from where this photo is and the shore is probably 3-5 miles down some steep hills.

 As I mentioned there are so many varieties of trees here.  This one Dave's standing in front of is a camphor tree.  We'll think of this trip every time we smell noxema...

This building used to be the tasting room before they moved it to a larger building.  It's one of the original standing structures and it was nicknamed the "Old Jail" because when they were renovating it for the winery they discovered a secret "basement" with shackles inside.  The winery isn't sure what it was orignally made for.

Another oddity, is this two faced statue....

The left side is the front of the statue, the other picture the back.  The locals would come up to this statue and pray and give offerings for safe voyages, successful fishing, or various other things.  It appears some still pay tribute to this guy.. er .. girl.

One case of wine later... we were feeling fantastic and Dave was making friends with everyone...

This was a totally unique experience and I'm so glad we took an afternoon to do it.  It was an awesome drive and made even better with the convertible!