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By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Hawaii Public Radio held its Wine Classic Auction &
Tasting yesterday at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.
Attendance was well over 400, double last year's
figure and the best in 14 years. This year's event
focused on Zinfandels, with a third of the wines
offered for tasting being this type of red.

Wine tasting
indulges the
wages of Zin

Hawaii Public Radio's
major fund-raising event
draws over 400 people

By Betty Shimabukuro
Star-Bulletin

As you know, children, stereotypes are bad. Always.

Except when they're useful. As in the stereotype that people who listen to public radio are cheese-eating, wine-drinking snobs.

Hawaii Public Radio played on that little preconception and packed 'em in at yesterday's Wine Classic, a major fund-raising event for the nonprofit organization.

Attendance was well over 400, double last year's figure and the best in 14 years. "We're milking the stereotype, that's all," HPR president Michael Titterton said.

Many thoughts come to mind with the mention of the words "public radio," Titterton said. "One of them is that listeners sit around eating Brie and sipping wine, listening to the music of dead Europeans."

Well, some of them may, but yesterday's group was a mixed crowd of people interested in wine at many levels.

They sniffed, sipped and swished through more than 200 wines, chatted up a half-dozen California winemakers and competed for a wide selection of donated wines put up for auction.

The real connection between public radio and fine wine is "an appreciation of quality and things done well," Titterton said.

The goal of the fund-raising event was to bring in $60,000 -- one step toward meeting the station's $1.6 million budget. How close they came won't be known until auction proceeds are completely tallied.

This year's event focused on Zinfandels, with a third of the wines offered for tasting being this type of red. Richard Field of R. Field Wine Co., co-chairman of the event, said it was a bit of a gamble to devote so much space to wines of one type, but it seemed to have paid off, thanks to the growing interest in this varietal.

That's what drew John Delos Reyes to the event. He took two full pages of notes at a special tasting where a panel of winemakers offered their opinions on dozens of hard-to-find Zins.

He was impressed by the variety. "The bottom line is, Zinfandels really stick out. They're very pleasant, very impressive."