Each time my wife, Cheryle, and I travel throughout the Mediterranean, I am reminded of how the locals merge wine with their meals.

Enjoying wine and food together is really a way of life for them, and they’ve had generations to find the “sweet spot” where a great wine and food match can be found.

In cafes and neighborhood eateries, a diner is normally served local country-style wines in carafes to enjoy with the meal, sometimes with small water glasses. In finer restaurants, especially in France, you’d rely on the in-house sommelier to help sift through the wine offerings to find one especially suited to the meal.

A group of us at Vino Italian Tapas & Wine Bar were fortunate recently to explore this wine and food connection through a workshop featuring seven of Hawaii’s top wine professionals.

Although wine-and-food pairing is a highly subjective subject, we thought this interactive event could give participants a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the hows and whys of food-and-wine pairings from some of the very best in the local industry.

The night’s wine professionals:

>> Tasters: Justin Sugita (Lucky Belly/Livestock Tavern/Tchin Tchin), Rick Lilley (12th Ave Grill), Sean Isono (Halekulani) and Chris Ramelb (winner of the 2016 Rudd Scholarship, issued by the Court of Master Sommeliers for receiving the highest tasting score worldwide)

>> Commentators: Kevin Toyama (Halekulani), Micah Suderman (Royal Hawaiian) and Mark Shishido (Alan Wong’s)

These wine talents came to the workshop to share expertise, insight, knowledge and experience on wine pairings. It was also an opportunity for them to learn from each other. Total collaboration.

As an example, the first course this dream team was challenged with was a pesto-marinated prawn served with kabocha pumpkin ravioli and sage brown butter. The tasters were given seven wines, served blind (no label, no look) and were asked to choose a wine to serve to the attendees.

As the lead “color commentator,” I was fascinated. One taster chose a light, tasty country-style wine (Punta Crena Mataossu) hailing from sunbaked, steep, rocky hillsides that dive into the sea on the west coast of Italy’s Liguria region. This also happens to be the home of pesto. Made sense to me.

Another chose a wonderfully pure, breathtaking, very mineral-driven white wine (Manni Nossing Sylvaner) from among the Dolomites of northeast Italy. Two of the sommeliers found this to be a very dynamic, interesting pairing with a wow factor.

Yet another chose an enticingly perfumed, light, crisp and refreshing white blend (Domaine Skouras “Zoe”) from the Peloponnese region of southern Greece. Its aromatics created magic with the basil pesto and the wine’s lemony crispness acted as a squeeze of lemon would with the shrimp.

Lastly, one chose a totally out-of-the-box, slightly fizzy, highly aromatic (lychee galore), cloudy California malvasia (Birichino Petillant Naturel Malvasia Bianca), which made a lot of sense with the pesto, the shrimp and especially the kabocha element.

FOUR DIFFERENT wines from four different growing regions of the world were selected, and each created quite the stir among the attendees, for very different reasons. I could see light bulbs going on in many people’s eyes and this created more fervor and much discussion, sometimes debates. That’s really part of the fun of opportunities like this.

But most important, as one of the participating sommeliers commented later, all seven of the preselected wines actually worked with the dish, each for a different reason, and he enjoyed each one.

That was the key word for the experience: Enjoyed, thanks to all the participants, sharing their insights and experience.

We’d like to repeat this event at Vino; check in at vinohawaii.com for announcements.

ON ANOTHER note, this week’s Kapalua Wine & Food Festival presents many more opportunites to learn about wine and the wine-food connection.

The festival runs Thursday through Sunday on Maui. Most events are sold out, but $100 tickets remain for “Family Tree,” 3:30 p.m. Saturday, at the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua. The seminar will feature second- and third-generation winemakers and their parents.

Go to kapaluawineandfoodfestival.com.

Chuck Furuya is a master sommelier and a partner in the DK Restaurants group. Follow his blog at chuckfuruya.com.