Hi-Time Wine Cellars is a family-owned retail store located in Costa Mesa, California.  Founded by Fritz Hanson and his brother-in-law Jim McVay, Hi-Time opened its cellar doors in 1957 at its original location on 17^th and Irvine in Costa Mesa, California.

Shortly after opening the store, Fritz’s younger brother Chuck Hanson joined the Hi-Time team. Chuck became interested in wine right away and became the store’s primary wine buyer.  Most of the business at that time consisted of distilled spirits and jug wines. Chuck remembers that the first wines to make a big impression on him were those of Charles Krug and Louis Martini.

Harold Hanson, who was in the military overseas at the time, joined Hi-Time after completing his tour of duty. While in the service in Europe, Harold took pictures of wine caves in Burgundy.  Bringing the photos back to his brothers, it was decided that they would build a wine cave within the store.  Harold became the General Manger for the store, a position he held for over 40 years.

In 1984, the Hanson brothers moved to their present location in Costa Mesa where they built one of the largest underground temperature-controlled wine cellars in the U.S.

This 3,000 square feet underground temperature-controlled cellar now includes a selection of 10,000+ wines from many different wineries and vintages.  This selection represents the world’s finest growing regions from such diverse areas as California, Oregon, Washington, France, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Germany, Austria, New Zealand, Australia and Portugal.

The recently re-designed store now has a retail space of 24,000 square feet. We added many new and exotic labels to our selection. Along with our selection of rare wines you will also find hard-to-find spirits and exotic liquors from all over the world.  In addition, we offer a comprehensive selection of North American micro-brews along with some of the best beers the rest of the world creates.  Our walk-in beer refrigerator offers over 1,000 different beers from 25 different countries.  Our walk-in tobacco humidor holds over 400 different cigar brands and sizes, including Davidoff, A. Fuentes, Cohiba, Ashton, Avo and Macanudo, as well as a great selection of pipes and fine pipe tobaccos.

We are proud that we have been able to serve our customers for nearly half of a century. Our goal is to provide our customers with one of the largest selections of fine wines and rare spirits from all over the world, at competitive prices and without sacrificing the quality of our customer service.

We are looking forward to serving you at our store location, over the phone or online. Thank you for your continued support of Hi-Time Wine Cellars where fine wines are handled with the care they deserve.

Awards: In 2005 The Hanson Family was rewarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from Patterson’s Beverage Journal.