Chimene Visser Macnaughton is named New Beverage Director for Honest Man Hospitality

Honest Man Hospitality has added a new beverage director to its team, Chimene Visser Macnaughton. Macnaughton began as the sommelier at Nick & Toni’s last year and was recently promoted to the beverage director position curating the beverage programs at all properties — Nick & Toni’s, Coche Comedor, Rowdy Hall, Townline BBQ and La Fondita.

Macnaughton is a third generation Angeleno who brings over 30 years of retail and restaurant management experience on both coasts to her new role with Honest Man. From her teenaged after school hours as a commissioned salesgirl at Gene Burton, Pasadena's one of a kind department store, to years in sales management with top specialty retailers, to the decade of fine dining management in San Francisco, Macnaughton has woven a ribbon of excellence in guest experience into and through her career mosaic.

[caption id="attachment_108750" align="alignnone" width="600"] Chimene Macnaughton is Honest Man Hospitality's new Beverage Director. Courtesy Honest Man Hospitality.[/caption]

A pivot from luxury retail to San Francisco’s white-hot haute cuisine scene in the ‘90’s set the stage for Macnaughton’s entrée into the world of fine wine. Her first-ever restaurant role at Hawthorne Lane meant learning a daunting list; just one part of an ambitious beverage program built by Union Square Hospitality’s Richard Coraine. These formative years studying under Coraine and famed Wolfgang Puck-trained Chefs David and Anne Gingrass forged her tasting sensibilities and informs her assortments to this day. In 2000, Macnaughton opened a farm-to-table restaurant in Ketchum, Idaho with friends from those San Francisco kitchens, bringing all the energy, excitement, and experience of big city service to North America’s first ski town.

Macnaughton has lived year-round on the East End since a chance summer visit in 2005 extended itself to meet the November start of American Sommelier’s Advanced Viticulture and Vinification course, which she passed at the top of her class in April 2006. Stints at Della Femina, Fresno, The 1770 House, and as a private chef for households in both Sun Valley and East Hampton were the backdrop for her seven year foray into sommelier-led retail. In January of 2014, Macnaughton opened Wainscott Main Wine & Spirits on Montauk Highway — the East End’s first sommelier-managed fine wine and spirits shop, and the home of her beloved all-levels wine workshops. In her tenure there, Macnaughton took WMW&S digital, establishing both its national shipping presence online, and their #GETSOMM on-demand local delivery service.

“I am thrilled and proud to be the first in the role of group-wide beverage director for Honest Man,” Macnaughton said. “I've been a customer for nearly 20 years, so I intend to honor each restaurant's deep history and unique ‘personality,’ while bringing individual beverage offerings into clearer focus.

“Our liquid landscape should be about tradition and discovery,” she added, “equal measures delicious.”

Macnaughton lives in Sag Harbor’s Mount Misery with her photographer husband Craig, and their two racing greyhounds, Casey Bones and Boaz.