Paddleboarding in Hawaii: Who Cares About Surf

FIFTY years ago the Waikiki beach boys were the suntanned demigods of Honolulu’s palm-fringed shores. After the first major resort — the Moana Hotel, now the Moana Surfrider — opened in 1901, organized beach service began on Waikiki. The beach boys came to act as instructors, lifeguards and entertainers, spreading the gospel of surfing to dreamy-eyed tourists of all ages.

They also pioneered the art of stand-up paddleboarding — also known as stand-up paddle surfing or beach-boy surfing — now all the rage among fitness enthusiasts and practiced from Cape Cod to Cape Town.

In San Francisco, where I live and surf, there’s almost always a stand-up paddleboarder in the lineup on any given morning. On days when there aren’t many waves, I envy the cruise-y ease of the paddleboarder as he maneuvers through flat water, getting exercise all the while. On a recent trip to Honolulu I decided to try stand-up paddleboarding in its birthplace.

First, I sought inspiration in the archives of the venerable Bishop Museum, founded in 1889 in honor of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last descendant of the royal Kamehameha family. The museum has a renowned collection of natural and cultural artifacts from Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. Surfboards were once exclusively the province of royalty; the museum’s holdings include 19th-century wooden boards that belonged to chiefs and princesses, as well as other models that were used by the legendary surfer Duke Kahanamoku and first introduced at Waikiki.

The Waikiki beach boys began using outrigger canoe paddles with surfboards in the 1960s, as a way to keep an eye on their tourist charges and to get better pictures as the beginners made their first attempts at wave riding. Ask locals about stand-up paddleboarding, and many will reminisce about the first time they saw someone do it.

“I remember this one guy, he wore a construction helmet and had a cigar clamped in his teeth,” Charles Myers, an archivist at the Bishop Museum, told me as he brought out vintage black-and-white photos of Waikiki. “He used a paddle and stood up on this big, floaty tandem board to see above the water when he was teaching people to surf.”

As I examined photographs of fit young men surfing, swimming and paddling canoes — and even giving ukulele lessons to women on the beach — I thought of the tradition of the “waterman,” the athletic and aesthetic ideal to which ancient Hawaiian men aspired. The beach boys, the modern epitome of watermen, found joy in every kind of water sport and helped to popularize surfing as we know it.

One of the most famous was George Freeth, an accomplished swimmer and lifeguard who was the subject of a profile by Jack London in 1907. Freeth, who moved to California and became known as a pioneer of modern surfing, was awarded a Congressional medal for rescuing several fishermen during a treacherous storm in 1908.

What began as a matter of practicality for the beach boys started popping up in its modern form as a full-fledged sport in the past 5 to 10 years; there are now stand-up paddleboarding competitions all over the world, from flat-water races on rivers and lakes to big-wave ocean contests. Since the boards are large and stable in flat water, they are easy to use.

Hotels around Honolulu have capitalized on the craze; many now offer stand-up paddleboarding lessons. For my maiden voyage I ventured into the calm turquoise lagoon at the Kahala Hotel & Resort, which looks out at the Diamond Head and Koko Head craters.

The afternoon sun glinted off the water as I stood uncertainly in the warm shallows with the relevant equipment — thick 10-foot board, long, angled paddle — I’d just rented from Kahala’s beach shack. The attendant reassured me that there was nothing to it.

“Hop on the board, start on your knees and try paddling from that stance first,” he instructed, mimicking the motions as he talked. “Keep the flat of the paddle to the back when you stroke. Then try standing up, keeping your weight to the center of the board and legs slightly apart.” He paused. “That’s it.”

Oh, and one last bit of advice.

“You might want to stay away from the waves for now,” he called as I began to paddle away. “And fall shallow!”

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The Falcon: A Jazz Haven in a Hudson Valley Hamlet

THE pianist Fred Hersch seemed right at home here one recent Saturday night, onstage at the Falcon, a perfectly unlikely jazz haven in this Hudson Valley hamlet. Leading a trio, he mingled standards and originals, including a graceful waltz with the appropriate title “Snow Is Falling.” The standing-room crowd, a few hundred strong, was lavish with its applause, never more so than when Mr. Hersch made a brief acknowledgment: “I just want to congratulate Tony for putting this place together.”

Tony is Tony Falco, an environmental scientist who has spent the last decade presenting jazz concerts in a barnlike structure he built behind his house. Over the years the intimacy of the setting and the hospitality of Mr. Falco and his family have brought a revolving roll call of top jazz talent to this town 70 miles north of Manhattan.

“It’s a really special place,” Kevin Hays, another acclaimed pianist, said of the Falcon, where he will appear with a trio on April 2. “The audiences are always great: quiet and respectful, even though it’s a very relaxed vibe, with kids often running around.”

I began hearing about the Falcon four or five years ago, from musicians who had played there. It sounded like a model of small but sturdy local activity, in a community far (but not too far) from the feverish metabolism of the city. Yet Mr. Falco’s operation isn’t on the radar of the average New York jazz fan; why would it be, with so many options closer to home? (Mr. Hersch, who played a week at the Village Vanguard in January, is scheduled to perform at the Weill Recital Hall on March 31.)

One recent development should add some incentive for out-of-towners: last fall Mr. Falco moved the Falcon from his backyard to larger accommodations on Route 9W, the town’s main drag. The handsomely renovated room, in what was once a 19th-century button factory, more than doubled his seating capacity, while easing tensions with his neighbors.

Since opening the day after Thanksgiving, the Falcon has settled into a steadier rhythm than ever before, with shows every Friday and Saturday. A liquor license came through in late January, and the kitchen began turning out light dinner fare. In theory, a visit to the club could form the cultural centerpiece of a restorative Hudson Valley weekend.

I set out to test that theory along with my wife, Ashley Lederer, who has grown warily accustomed to my idea of a weekend getaway. (I review pop and jazz for The New York Times; she harbors the humane conviction that a weekend should feel different than the rest of the week, and that a getaway involves getting away.) The good news is that we enjoyed Mr. Hersch’s two sets, with the bassist Larry Grenadier and the drummer Richie Barshay, at least as much as we would have in the city. Even better news: The weekend really did feel like a mini-vacation.

It began with a roadside stop at the workshop of Bruce Bayard, also known by the name of his trademark creation, Chainsaw Bear. Since 1993 Mr. Bayard has been using chainsaws to carve three-foot-high wood sculptures, specializing in grizzlies but also producing made-to-order sea captains and cigar-store Indians. He warmly welcomed a pair of unexpected visitors, sharing some tips about the area, starting with the Falcon.

The Hudson Valley is known for its agriculture, and the town of Marlborough, which includes the farming hamlets of Marlboro and Milton, fits the bill. Most of the area’s orchards and farms have yet to reopen for the season; Meet Me in Marlborough, a cooperative of farmers and businesses, oversees orchard and farm tours. Our visit, in February, was poorly timed for agritourism, but we did stop at two wineries, encountering a study in contrasts as well as a sampling of local flavor.

Benmarl Winery at Slate Hill Vineyards in Marlboro, which holds the claim to America’s oldest vineyard, wears its heritage with pride. Though no longer owned by the storied winemaker Mark Miller, who died in 2008, its cellar still holds some of his vintages, their labels dust caked and faded. A $6 six-flight tasting yielded some pleasant surprises, including a baco noir and a de Chaunac, hybrid varieties common to the Hudson Valley, as well as a crisply balanced Riesling. (As a bonus we were offered a dram of Clinton Vineyards cassis, which had a bouquet strikingly redolent of a bloody mary but the musky taste of black currant.)

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From Frozen Vines In Ontario, a Sweet Specialty: Ice Wine

Steve Pfost for The New York TimesDan Stouck, center, was among the volunteers picking grapes recently at Malivoire Wine Company in Beamsville, Ontario.

Beamsville, Ontario

The grapes are pressed shortly after being picked, releasing sweet, concentrated juices.

IT is 14 degrees above zero as a group of wine lovers converges in a vineyard on the Niagara Peninsula. Frosty bundles of Riesling grapes hang on rows of vines in the pale, gathering daylight. A storm the night before has left behind six inches of fresh snow.

Perfect conditions, the winemaker Shiraz Mottiar declares, for picking the frozen grapes that he will soon transform into Canada’s specialty, ice wine, for his employer, Malivoire Wine Company. By law, Canadian ice-wine makers cannot call their product by that name unless it is made from grapes picked off the vine at or below -8 Celsius (17.6 degrees Fahrenheit). So far, so good. Mr. Mottiar is confident that the temperature will hold, at least for a few hours, and instructs the group to get to work. What is ideal for the harvest, though, is not so great for human extremities.

“My feet are very cold now,” said Peter Scott, who woke up at 4:45 a.m. to make the hour-and-10-minute drive from Toronto with his wife, Jessica Dolman. This is the fourth year of picking for the couple, who, like the other 25 or so loyal Malivoire customers bending intently over their work, are not paid for their labor. They will, however, receive a free bottle of ice wine with their names listed among the workers on the 2010 vintage label. After the harvest they’ll also be invited back inside the winery, where the proprietor, Martin Malivoire, has been preparing vats of hot chocolate and chili spiked with ice wine.

“The whole experience is very addictive,” Ms. Dolman said.

Among devotees in North America, this stretch of flat farmland bordered by Lake Ontario to the north and Lake Erie to the south is ground zero for indulging a taste for ice wine, a sweet wine that is often paired with dessert, rich cheeses and foie gras. Canada vies with Germany for the title of world’s largest producer of ice wine — some years, because of inconsistent weather, Germany’s crop is small or nonexistent. (Austria, Switzerland and New York’s Finger Lakes are among the many areas that also make ice wine.)

More than 75 percent of all the ice wine in Canada comes from Ontario. (The remainder is made in regions like southern Quebec and the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia.) Unlike more temperate parts of the world, Canada has consistently cold winters, which guarantee an annual crop of frozen grapes. Still, ice wine represents just a small percentage of wine being produced here. It’s expensive to make: a ton of grapes yields only one-sixth the amount of ice wine as table wine — hence its nickname, liquid gold — and its prices start at $50 for a half-bottle. Leaving grapes on the vine long past normal fall harvest also is risky.

“There are all kinds of hazards,” said Norman D. Beal, a former oil trader who in 2000 turned a decrepit barn into an opulent tasting room at his Peninsula Ridge Estates Winery on a hill in Beamsville. “There are the birds, mildew, all kinds of diseases.” That’s in addition to the vagaries of the weather, including rain, hail, ice storms and midwinter thaws.

Extreme wine making, as some call ice-wine production, calls for extreme wine touring. In winter that means lots of layers, and maybe a face mask with an opening big enough for sipping. The trade-offs: there’s plenty of room to belly up to the tasting bars, and it’s easier to get a table at one of the region’s many fine restaurants.

Each tasting inevitably leads to a game of identifying classic ice-wine flavors: lychee nut, caramel, toffee, strawberry jam, crème brûlée, burnt orange, citrus, tropical fruit. Then what follows is a discussion of the improbable alchemy that goes into producing a drink that is said to have been created by mistake in a German vineyard in 1794.

Ice-wine makers here like to leave the grapes on the vine through a series of mild freezes and thaws instead of picking at the first opportunity. That process produces the right balance of sweetness, acidity and the nuanced flavors that separate great ice wine from something that is cloyingly sweet.

“You’re always watching the sugar and acid levels,” Mr. Mottiar said. “Once they peak, then you pick and press.” The ice-wine harvest usually doesn’t occur until well into December, and in some years it has stretched into February.

When the frozen grapes are pressed at just the right temperature, usually immediately after picking, the water is crystallized, and the juice that remains consists of the most exquisitely concentrated sugars and flavors.

Correction: An earlier version of a photo caption on this article misspelled the name of the town where volunteers were picking grapes. As correctly noted elsewhere in the article, it is Beamsville, not Bearnsville.

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