Some wine professionals are remembered for what they know. Others are remembered for how they make people feel.
In this episode of Chuck Furuya Uncorked, Chuck and Kale Furuya are joined by Mark Shishito, a longtime Hawaii wine and hospitality professional best known for his work at Alan Wong’s Restaurant. The conversation moves through Mark’s early wine journey, the rise of boutique wine culture in Hawaii, the Hawaii Regional Cuisine movement, restaurant service, wine list building, and one of the most misunderstood grapes in the world: Riesling.
The episode is not only about wine knowledge. It is about how wine knowledge becomes useful when it serves the guest, the food, the restaurant team, and the overall experience.
What This Episode Is About
Chuck introduces Mark as a true sommelier: someone with deep wine knowledge, world-class tasting ability, and a reputation for gracious, thoughtful service. Mark started in hospitality as a barback and bartender, later worked in major Hawaii restaurants and hotels, and eventually became closely associated with Alan Wong’s Restaurant.
The conversation begins with Mark’s early inspiration. His interest in wine grew in the late 1980s, when Chuck brought serious sommelier education and wine gatherings to Hawaii. One important moment was a retreat in Kokee on Kauai, where young food and beverage professionals gathered with figures such as Fred Dame, Nunzio Alioto, Fran Casella, and Chuck Furuya.
For Mark, the inspiration was not only the wine itself. It was the way these people carried themselves. Their knowledge, humility, professionalism, and generosity opened a new horizon.
Wine became more than a beverage. It became food, people, stories, culture, and hospitality.
Wine Is More Than What Is in the Glass
One of the early themes in the episode is the shift from commercial, brand-driven wine to smaller, family-owned, artisan producers.
Chuck and Mark talk about a time when Hawaii’s wine scene began discovering more boutique producers from places like Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Rhône Valley, Germany, and beyond. These were not just labels on a shelf. They were wines connected to families, vineyards, land, and generations of work.
That matters because it changes how wine is understood.
A bottle is not just a product. It can carry a family story, a farming tradition, a vineyard site, and a way of life. That kind of wine naturally connects with the broader Hawaii Regional Cuisine movement, where local chefs were also focusing more deeply on local farmers, producers, ingredients, and place.
If food could honor local producers, wine could honor small growers too.
That synergy becomes one of the key ideas of the episode.
Hawaii Regional Cuisine Changed Wine Pairing
The conversation then moves into food and wine pairing.
Chuck explains that Hawaii Regional Cuisine created a new challenge. The old model of pairing wine with classic French sauces did not fully apply anymore. Hawaii’s chefs were working with local ingredients, Asian influences, seafood, miso, ginger, sweet corn, soy, spice, tropical fruit, and complex fusion flavors.
That required a different way of thinking.
Wine pairing could not just be “red with meat” and “white with fish.” It had to consider sweetness, salt, umami, acidity, spice, bitterness, texture, and aromatics.
Mark describes how each wine and food experience builds a kind of palate memory. Over time, working with chefs and tasting dishes with different wines creates a personal library. That library helps a sommelier understand what might work with a new dish.
The First Pairing Lessons Are Often Simple
When Mark is asked about his first food-and-beverage aha moment, he does not start with a rare wine. He starts with something simple: saimin and Coca-Cola.
That pairing works because the salty, briny comfort of saimin is refreshed by the sweetness, acidity, and bubbles of Coke. It is a local, everyday example, but it teaches the same basic principles that apply to wine.
Bubbles refresh the palate.
Sweetness can balance salt.
Acidity can cut through richness.
A drink can make the next bite better.
This is a useful way to make wine pairing less intimidating. People already understand pairing from ordinary food memories. Wine simply gives another language for the same experience.
Riesling With Complex Food
One of the most important parts of the episode is the discussion of Riesling.
Mark and Chuck talk about Riesling as one of the great noble grape varieties, but also one of the most misunderstood. Many people hear “Riesling” and immediately assume it is sweet. Chuck explains that Riesling can be made in many styles: dry, medium-dry, medium-sweet, sweet, or dessert-level.
The grape itself is not the issue. The winemaker decides the style.
Riesling becomes especially important in this episode because it works so well with complex foods. Mark’s famous pairing at Alan Wong’s — Gunderloch Riesling with ginger-crusted onaga, miso sesame vinaigrette, and sweet corn — comes up again. The dish has sweetness, saltiness, umami, ginger, fish, and texture. A simple dry white might become sharp or bitter. A big red would be wrong. But the right Riesling can connect the whole dish.
The wine does not overpower the food. It fills the gaps.
Why Riesling Works With Asian and Hawaiian Flavors
The episode gives several reasons why Riesling is so useful with Hawaiian, Asian, and fusion cuisine.
First, Riesling has strong acidity, but it can feel rounder and less aggressive than some other white grapes.
Second, Riesling can carry a little sweetness, which helps with salty, spicy, or umami-rich dishes.
Third, Riesling often has minerality and aromatic lift, which keeps the wine from feeling heavy or simple.
Fourth, it can refresh the palate without clashing with delicate ingredients.
This matters when dishes include ingredients like soy sauce, miso, hoisin, black bean sauce, oyster sauce, ginger, chili, wasabi, curry, capers, citrus, or sweet corn. These flavors can make dry, higher-alcohol wines taste bitter or harsh.
A slightly sweeter, lower-alcohol Riesling can calm the dish and make the pairing feel seamless.
Building a Wine List for Real Guests
Mark also explains how he thinks about building a wine list.
A restaurant list has to serve different situations. Some guests want wines by the glass. Some want iconic bottles. Some want something to pair with the food. Some simply want a beautiful bottle to drink.
The list has to cover all of those needs.
For a restaurant like Alan Wong’s, the wines also need to work with complex dishes. That means balance matters. Deliciousness matters. Moderate alcohol matters. Too much oak, too much alcohol, or too much bitterness can fight with the food.
Mark looks for wines that can handle aromatics, slight spice, multiple flavor components, and texture. The wine has to work across a wide range of dishes, not just one narrow pairing.
That is why Riesling appears so often. It is flexible, refreshing, and capable of working with flavors that are hard for many wines.
How to Find Value Wines
Another useful section is about value.
Mark says one of the first things he looks at is the producer. Trusted producers often make good wines at several levels, not only at the top end.
Chuck expands on this idea. If the most famous places become expensive, you need to keep looking off the beaten path. Value often comes from less famous regions, family-owned estates, or producers whose land has been passed down for generations. If there is no massive land cost or marketing overhead, the bottle can offer better value.
That is a practical lesson for wine buyers.
Value does not mean cheap for the sake of cheap. It means quality for the dollar.
Sometimes the best value is not from the most famous vineyard or the most prestigious label, but from a great producer’s more approachable wine.
Hospitality Starts Before the Guest Walks In
The middle of the episode becomes a strong lesson in hospitality.
Mark says service does not begin when a guest enters the restaurant. Service begins when you wake up. It is a way of life.
That means hospitality is not just technical execution. It is how you were raised, how you treat people, how you take care of your team, how you deal with your vendors, how you support your staff, and how you make guests feel.
At Alan Wong’s, Mark describes a team philosophy: your success is my success, and our success is shared. If one person has a good night, the whole team benefits.
That is the opposite of ego-driven service.
Hospitality is not about being the star. It is about helping everyone succeed.
The Room Is Always Talking
Mark and Chuck also talk about awareness on the floor.
A great hospitality professional is always scanning the room. They notice the first sip of wine, the first bite of food, the guest looking around, the hand going up, the dropped fork, the glass that needs refilling, the steak being cut, the facial expression that says something is wrong.
The goal is to fix things before the guest has to complain.
Chuck mentions using a water pitcher as a way to enter a table naturally. It gives him a reason to check in without interrupting too aggressively. The real purpose is not only to pour water. It is to read the table.
That is a simple but powerful hospitality lesson.
Service is not only what you do. It is what you notice.
Leading by Example
Kale brings up something that other guests had mentioned about Mark: he leads by example.
He is not above taking out the trash, making whipped cream for a guest’s coffee drink, helping wherever needed, or doing the small tasks that keep a restaurant moving.
Mark’s answer is simple: you cannot give what you do not have. If you want to teach service, you need to live it.
This connects to the broader theme of the series. A true sommelier is not only someone who knows wine. A true sommelier understands service, humility, teamwork, timing, and care.
Wine knowledge without hospitality is incomplete.
Riesling Tasting: Dry, Slightly Sweet, and Sweeter
The final major section of the episode is a Riesling tasting.
Chuck pours several Rieslings to show how different styles work. The first two are from Helmut Dönnhoff in the Nahe region of Germany. One is a dry estate Riesling, and the second has a little more residual sweetness. The third wine is from Julian Haart in the Mosel, specifically from Piesport.
The point is not just to compare labels. The point is to understand how alcohol, sweetness, acidity, minerality, and texture change the experience.
The dry wine has more alcohol because more sugar has fermented out. The slightly sweet wines have lower alcohol because some sugar remains. That small amount of sweetness changes how the wine feels, especially with food.
Chuck uses the alcohol percentage as a practical clue. A dry Riesling may be around 12% alcohol, while a slightly sweet one might be closer to 10.5% or even 9%. That does not tell the whole story, but it helps beginners understand what might be in the bottle.
Riesling and Minerality
The tasting also shows how transparent Riesling can be.
Mark describes the Nahe Riesling as earthy, stony, and mineral, with impressions like wet stones, quartz, and tropical stone fruit. The Mosel Riesling shows a different profile: more slate, graphite, green apple, pear, and a sharper, lighter feeling.
This is one reason Riesling is so fascinating. It can communicate place very clearly.
A wine from the Nahe does not taste the same as a wine from the Mosel. Different soils, climates, vineyards, and producers create different expressions.
For beginners, this is a good way to understand terroir without making it too abstract. Taste two Rieslings from different regions side by side, and the differences become easier to notice.
Riesling With Blue Cheese
The tasting becomes more practical when Chuck brings out Cambozola, a triple-cream blue cheese from Bavaria.
Blue cheese is salty. That saltiness changes how the wines taste.
With the dry Riesling, the alcohol and bitterness become more noticeable. The wine still cleanses the palate, but it stands apart from the cheese.
With the slightly sweet Rieslings, the pairing becomes more seamless. The sweetness acts like fruit on a cheese plate. It softens the saltiness and helps the wine and food blend together.
This is one of the clearest lessons in the episode:
Salt can make alcohol and bitterness stand out.
A little sweetness can make a salty pairing feel more complete.
That is why slightly sweet Riesling can be so good with cheese, spicy food, salty dishes, or complex Asian flavors.
Chicken Piccata and the Right Riesling
Kale connects the cheese exercise to a dinner he cooked at home: chicken piccata.
Chicken piccata has lemon and capers, which means high acidity and saltiness. He tried several Rieslings and noticed that the drier one made the alcohol stand out more, while the slightly sweeter one worked better.
That example makes the lesson easy to understand.
When a dish has lemon, salt, capers, soy, miso, or other sharp/salty components, a wine with a touch of sweetness and lower alcohol can often work better than a bone-dry wine.
It does not make the pairing taste sugary. It makes the food and wine feel balanced.
Practical Pairing Ideas From the Episode
The episode gives several useful examples for pairing different Rieslings.
A dry Riesling can work well with bright, clean foods like ceviche, simple seafood, or dishes where the wine acts like a squeeze of lemon.
A slightly sweet Riesling can work with fried fish, fish tacos, guacamole, roasted beets, goat cheese, citrus vinaigrettes, herbs, and dishes with some salt or spice.
A sweeter or lower-alcohol Riesling can work with miso-glazed butterfish, ginger-crusted fish, soy-based sauces, hoisin, black bean sauce, oyster sauce, curry, chili, wasabi, and other salty or spicy Asian flavors.
The more salt, spice, umami, or sweetness in the dish, the more helpful that small amount of sweetness in the wine can become.
The Method Behind Pairing
Near the end, Chuck explains how his mind works when thinking about pairing.
First, is the wine good?
Second, how much would he pay for it?
Third, what kind of foods will it work with?
Then he thinks about the properties of the wine: acidity, sweetness, alcohol, bitterness, minerality, texture, and aromatics. He compares those to the properties of the dish.
If you do not understand what sticks out in the food and what sticks out in the wine, you are just guessing.
This does not mean every home cook needs to become a sommelier. But it gives a useful framework.
Look for the “branches” in the food: salt, spice, sweetness, fat, bitterness, acidity.
Then look for the “branches” in the wine: alcohol, oak, tannin, sweetness, acidity, bitterness.
The best pairings happen when those branches do not fight.
Final Takeaway
This episode is one of the strongest in the series for anyone interested in food and wine pairing.
Mark Shishito shows that great wine service is not about showing off. It is about care, timing, humility, awareness, and helping the guest have a better experience.
The Riesling tasting shows why this grape deserves more attention. Riesling is not simply “sweet wine.” It can be dry, slightly sweet, mineral, crisp, aromatic, age-worthy, and incredibly food-friendly.
Most importantly, Riesling can solve pairing problems that other wines cannot. It can work with salt, spice, miso, ginger, citrus, seafood, cheese, and the layered flavors of Hawaiian and Asian-influenced cuisine.
The bigger lesson is simple:
Wine pairing is not about rules. It is about balance.
And hospitality is not about performance. It is about making people feel cared for.
That is what makes wine matter.
FAQ
Who is Mark Shishito?
Mark Shishito is a longtime Hawaii hospitality and wine professional closely associated with Alan Wong’s Restaurant. In the episode, Chuck presents him as a true sommelier known for wine knowledge, service, hospitality, and food pairing.
What is the main idea of this episode?
The episode focuses on Riesling, food pairing, hospitality, wine list building, and the role of service in creating a memorable restaurant experience.
Why is Riesling misunderstood?
Many people assume Riesling is always sweet. The episode explains that Riesling can be dry, slightly sweet, medium-sweet, or dessert-style depending on how the winemaker makes it.
Why does Riesling work well with Asian food?
Riesling often has bright acidity, moderate or low alcohol, aromatics, minerality, and sometimes a little sweetness. These qualities can work well with soy, miso, ginger, spice, salt, citrus, and umami-rich dishes.
What is a good Riesling pairing from the episode?
One key example is Riesling with ginger-crusted onaga, miso sesame vinaigrette, and sweet corn. The wine helps balance the dish’s sweetness, saltiness, umami, and aromatics.
Why does slightly sweet Riesling work with blue cheese?
Blue cheese is salty, and salt can make dry wines taste more bitter or alcoholic. A slightly sweet Riesling works like fruit on a cheese plate, softening the saltiness and making the pairing more seamless.
What is the difference between dry Riesling and slightly sweet Riesling?
Dry Riesling has little or no residual sugar and often slightly higher alcohol. Slightly sweet Riesling keeps some sugar, which lowers the alcohol and can make the wine more flexible with salty or spicy foods.
How can you tell if Riesling might be sweet?
One simple clue is alcohol percentage. A Riesling around 12% may be dry, while one around 10.5% or 9% may have more residual sweetness. It is not a perfect rule, but it can help.
What does hospitality mean in this episode?
Hospitality means taking care of people before they even ask. It includes reading the room, supporting the team, noticing guest reactions, and making sure people leave happy.
What is the biggest lesson from this episode?
The biggest lesson is that wine knowledge only matters when it helps create enjoyment. Riesling is powerful because it works with food, and hospitality is powerful because it makes people feel genuinely cared for.
