Ready to taste? The line-up at a special Spanish wine tasting at HASR Wine Co.

Tucked into a small courtyard with a peaceful burbling fountain off Pauahi Street in Chinatown is the best wine store on Oahu.

There are, of course, many excellent wine stores around the island: Fujioka's, Tamura's, Wine the Experience. But HASR Wine Company is spotlight-worthy for its bi-weekly tastings and events. (HASR stands for Highly Allocated, meaning difficult to find wines, and Spoiled Rotten, referring to owner Terry Kakazu's ability to get them. It just celebrated its 5th anniversary.)

Tuesdays and Fridays from 5-7 p.m., they'll offer free tastings from a flight of wines from a region, a vintner or a particular grape or blend. That's right, free — you don't hear that often anymore. Although if you're a believer in Give And You Shall Receive (as I am), you'll either purchase a bottle from the flight (which are all discounted for the tasting) or something else from the store. A popular activity is to buy a bottle and take it around the corner to the Little Village Noodle House, which charges a nominal corkage fee, or to Grand Cafe, which is right next door and shares its outdoor dining area with the HASR courtyard.

HASR also offers paid tastings, which I tried for the first time on Thursday: A flight of high-end Spanish wines. Normally I skip the paid tastings because HASR's free tastings always offer quality wines, so why fork over $30 to taste something that was sure to be better, but was, well, $30 more expensive?

Sky Cameron from local wine distributor Chambers and Chambers was conducting the tasting — very knowledgeable about wine, and a great lover of Spanish wines in particular: they're his favorite. So I knew the wines would be great, the stories would be great... it'd be worth the extra investment.


Sky Cameron describes the wines as we go. We started with tempranillos and moved onto the bolder grenaches.


You're reading right: there were a couple of $150+ bottles up there. Nearly all were high-end, definitely all were tasty but wildly different.

Normally I'd be able to pick out the bottle I just had to have from a flight with ease, but this was a challenge. As much as I loved the big-ticket Aquilon and Nido, they were easy to eliminate on price. But the others were all wonderful as well. I took home the Ateca, discounted to $37 from $45 for the tasting. It's sitting in my wine closet waiting for the right party.

You can get the latest on HASR's tasting events off its website, or just show up on Tuesday or Friday to enjoy a viticultural adventure.

See HASR Wine Co. in 3D »