Natural Wine Oasis in the Middle of Nowhere
Kakaʻako · Honolulu · Wine Bar & Spirits Lounge (BYO Food) · Visit Website ↗
Reviewed June 23, 2026 · How we review
RagingWine reviewed Brix and Stones’s wine list and gave it The Wild Card — RagingWine’s Vibe-Check rating. How RagingWine reviews wine lists →
Wingman Metrics
You walk into a second-floor lounge on Waimanu Street — cigars, spirits, and a wine retail wall that immediately signals someone actually cares. This is not a restaurant wine list; it's a curated natural wine shop where you're allowed to drink your purchase on the spot. In Honolulu, that alone makes it worth knowing about.
Owner Rick Lilley has built a 60-to-90-bottle selection that leans hard into natural and low-intervention producers — pét-nats, méthode ancestrale sparklings, orange wines, and small European and New World labels you won't find at Safeway or Total Wine. The European sparkling game is real: Laurent-Perrier Brut La Cuvée and Gondolino Rosé Prosecco Extra Dry anchor the fizz end of things, with a handful of natural pét-nats rounding out the category nicely. The list has gaps — no deep cellar, no verticals, no old-vine throwbacks — but the intentionality is obvious. Brix and Stones isn't trying to be everything; it's trying to be the natural wine shop Honolulu needed.
Glass pour documentation is murky — this place operates more like a retail-with-seating model, so bottles are the main event. A 'J. Bordeaux' carafe option does show up on the menu at $55, which suggests some pours are available, but formal by-the-glass programming isn't the focus here. If you want to drink by the glass, ask — the staff knows the list well enough to guide you.
Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley — $85
Caymus retails for $90 on the mainland, so at $85 on-site in a Honolulu lounge, this is essentially at or below cost — rare to see in Hawaii where everything carries an island premium. It's not the most exciting bottle on the list, but the math is genuinely good.
Natural Pét-Nat (méthode ancestrale sparkling)
Brix and Stones actively promotes these low-intervention sparklings and they're the spiritual center of the list. Most guests gravitate toward the Champagne or Prosecco, but the pét-nats represent what this place is actually about — funky, alive, and a world away from the resort wine lists dominating the rest of Honolulu.
J. de Telmont Champagne (187ml)
A 187ml split at $45 is a brutal ask. That's a quarter-bottle format retailing around $7, and even accounting for the lounge experience, the math doesn't hold up. Order a full bottle of something more interesting for the same spend.
Gondolino Rosé Prosecco Extra Dry + BYO charcuterie or takeout from a nearby Kakaʻako spot
This is a BYO food situation, so lean into it. The Gondolino Rosé Prosecco is light, slightly sweet, and bubbly enough to cut through cured meats and salty bites — grab a charcuterie board from a neighbor and you've got a proper evening.
The Bottom Line
Brix and Stones is the kind of place that shouldn't exist in the form it does, in the city it's in — and that's exactly why you should go. The markup swings from genuinely fair to eyebrow-raising depending on what you order, but the natural wine focus and knowledgeable staff make it the most interesting wine stop in Honolulu by a comfortable margin.
Kahala · Honolulu · Italian
Arancino at The Kahala is doing something genuinely unusual for a hotel-adjacent Italian restaurant in Hawaii — it's built a list around obscure Northern Italian producers that most diners won't recognize, and that's exactly the point. Markups are on the steeper side and we can't vouch for glassware or staff knowledge from the available data, but the wine selection itself earns respect. If you know your Nebbiolo from your Barbera, this list rewards attention.
Small but Thoughtful
Steep
Basic Stemmed
Rotating Cast
Set & Forget
Acceptable
· Honolulu · Seafood
Mina's Fish House isn't building a wine program — it's building a dessert wine moment, and that is a genuinely uncommon thing to find at a restaurant of this profile. If you're eating dinner here, you'll need to source your table wine elsewhere on the menu or order cocktails; this list doesn't cover that ground. But if you want to close out a Four Seasons meal in Honolulu with a glass of 2013 Tokaji Aszú or something out of the Madeira cellar, this is a quietly excellent place to do it.
Small but Thoughtful
Steep
Basic Stemmed
Rotating Cast
Set & Forget
Acceptable
Waikiki · Honolulu · Italian
Quiora isn't trying to be a wine destination, and it doesn't need to be — it's a 22-label Italian restaurant list on a rooftop in Waikiki with an ocean view doing the heavy lifting. But the list is genuinely considered, the glass-pour selection is deep for the size, and pricing is fair by hotel standards. If you're eating here, drink the Tintero rosato or the Selbach Riesling and enjoy the sunset.
Small but Thoughtful
Fair
Basic Stemmed
Rotating Cast
Set & Forget
Acceptable
Waikiki · Honolulu · Italian / Californian Coastal
Botanico is doing something genuinely unusual for Waikiki — building an Italian-forward wine list with real regional depth and mostly fair pricing in a place where restaurants routinely treat wine as an afterthought. The by-the-glass program alone is worth a seat at the bar. If you care at all about what's in your glass, this belongs on your radar.
Small but Thoughtful
Fair
Basic Stemmed
Rotating Cast
Set & Forget
Acceptable
· Honolulu · Hawaii Regional
Moku Nui is a casual Hawaii Regional spot that has no business running a wine list this thoughtful — and we mean that as high praise. Fair glass prices, a sommelier clearly making intentional choices, and enough variety to reward the curious drinker. If you're eating here, skip the default beer order and let someone at the table order the Vouvray.
Small but Thoughtful
Fair
Basic Stemmed
Knowledgeable & Friendly
Set & Forget
Acceptable
Waikiki · Honolulu · Seafood
Azure is a genuinely lovely place to drink wine — the setting does a lot of heavy lifting and the France-Italy-Hawaii focus is a sensible match for the island seafood menu. Just go in knowing resort markup is real, and if the tasting menu with wine pairing is available, that's likely your best shot at getting something memorable poured without having to guess blind from the list.
Solid Range
Steep
Basic Stemmed
Willing but Green
Set & Forget
Acceptable
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