Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1787
78 / the tasting panel / august 2009 Wine Notables " That wall is geographically correct," explains Georges Serna, the French-born sommelier who runs a chic wine and chocolate retail shop within the tony and legendary Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. While this particular Hilton has been home to the Golden Globe Awards, Serna's Le Château, an opera- tion run separately from the hotel, offers award-winning wines from boutique and well-known winemakers. The Central Coast wall, browsed from left to right, begins as far south as Malibu and Bel Air (represented by Moraga), then continues up through Santa Barbara County, runs a dash up the road to Edna Valley, takes a jaunt through Paso Robles and goes onward through the Monterey Coast and Carmel Valley. A donut-shaped wine bar divides the room, which caters to enophiles, from wine shelves to tasting table to a precisely temperature-controlled 55-degree library room that reroutes customers from the confi nes of the Central Coast to high-end Sonoma and Napa reds, as well as an awe- inspiring collection of vintage French wines. Serna, who competed with Andrea Immer and two other contenders in the late 1990s for the title of Best Sommelier in the United States, bestowed by the Sommelier Society of America, is proud to say he was at least in the top four in the country. Now, Serna supports California winemak- ers with retail sales, wine fl ights at the bar and an ever-changing menu of labels. Great for intimate industry tastings, supplier meet- ings and sit-down dinners, Le Château re- mains a Central Coast connection for trade and consumers. From Malibu to Monterey Le Château at The Beverly Hilton showcases wines from California's Central Coast Georges Serna operates Le Château, a wine and chocolate retail shop in Beverly Hills. Le Nez du Vin is a very well-organized tool for teaching yourself and others how to identify the signature scents and fl avors in a wine by developing scent memory. Based on the groundbreaking book Making Sense of Wine by Jean Lenoir, Le Nez du Vin is available in a series of kits. The Master Kit, available at Le Châ- teau, comes with 54 vials of scents, an illustrated 119-page book and 54 illus- trated, two-sided explanatory cards. On one side of each card is a number that corresponds to a scent in a vial, along with a color picture representing the scent. On the other side is the name of the scent, a short descriptive para- graph that helps you understand what the scent smells like, through associa- tions with other scents, and in which varietal(s) the scent is commonly found (along with their growing regions). Smell Well Belgian chocolates from Neuhas, a 150-year old choco- latier that Serna claims is the world's best, beckon in fancy shapes inside a cooled counter.