PORTLAND WINE WEEK 2024 FEATURE: SOMMELIER Kelly Nelson of Fore StReet
Sponsored by Buoy Local.
Introducing the Portland Wine Week Sommelier Showcase, brought to you by Buoy Local. Portland, Maine, may be a small city, but it has an outsized reputation for wine and food thanks to the talented culinary stars behind its mouth-watering menus. When it comes to wine, Portland is dominated by women wine professionals who work hard to bring you the best bottles from across the globe. This series spotlights 10 women Sommeliers pouring phenomenal wine all Portland Wine Week-long!
Kelly’S Portland Wine Week Events:
If you’re a visitor, you might have noticed Fore Street from its eponymous downtown byway that you can wander down admiring boutique shops, cobblestones, historic monuments, and peeks of the waterfront. We can’t blame you if the floor-to-ceiling windows, rustic wooden tables set immaculately, and glistening wine glasses catch your eye. When you see firelight dancing in the windows, you might step inside to investigate, discovering that the pièce de résistance, and the source of the cozy, flickering light, is a huge wood-fired grill and oven, complete with turnspit.
Kelly Nelson is an impressive figure as the Wine List Curator at Fore Street. They have a strong cocktail program, but the wine list steals the show. This is a classic yet approachable style of fine dining where guests with all levels of wine expertise come to enjoy. Her list appeals both to guests looking for a big Californian red to pair with their woodfired hanger steak, and to those looking for more esoteric pairings to attend to the chefs’ seasonal spoils – whether that’s halibut, Morels, squid or strawberries.
If you’ve been around Portland for the last 30 years or so, you might remember the tidal wave of farm-to-table as it crashed over the country. In our little city, Fore Street was one of the first. We asked Kelly to elaborate on the culinary inspiration: “The ethos of the restaurant is focused on our relationships with our foragers, our farmers and fishermen. We change our menu from day to day to connect with seasonal items such as fiddleheads and spring ramps as of late, to, in the winter, when we can highlight our pickled program. And we have a huge larder of housemade pickles and different sauces that we then can use to spice up our menu during the cooler months of the year when there isn’t a bountiful array of different produce to show off.”
On pairing wines with this unique cuisine, she notes, “what's great about working here is that I can utilize wines from around the world to match up with the flavors that the chefs put together on the menu. We have a woodfired grill and oven that adds some char, even a little bit of smokiness to a lot of our dishes. Wines from Portugal and Spain to Malbec to even Bordeaux go extremely well with this cuisine.” The wine list plumbs many regions for its hidden gems and classic expressions, as does the food menu. You’ll be comforted by familiar Maine fare such as lobster, mussels and oysters – but so delightfully surprised by their creative, accompanying flavors – mignonette made with seaweed, bread for mussels spread with a garlic and almond compound butter, housemade salumi with native herbs, any and all types of small local poultry roasted á la spit.
Kelly first came to Maine to attend The College of the Atlantic in Mount Desert Island. “I went from living inland in Springfield, Vermont to an island in Maine. It was a big culture shock for me!” However, she quickly fell in love and realized Maine as her home. She’s lived as far north as MDI, and as far south as Eliot, Maine (the last town on I-95 before New Hampshire) but found herself back in Portland around fifteen years ago, living downtown for many years and finally settling as a homeowner in Biddeford. She always gravitated toward to Greater Portland because of the rich restaurant scene, “There's something really special about working and living in an area where you can throw a stone and hit an incredible restaurant, there is not one place I can think of in the world that has this much diversity and this much talent in such a small space.”
Though Portland alone cannot take full credit, as the wealth of the restaurant culture has everything to owe to the greater ecological and agricultural bounty of the state. “It kind of ruins you when you travel elsewhere and you start to realize how unique [Maine] is and how incredible and how blessed we are to have so many young farmers in the state.” Kelly wants to shine the spotlight on farmers with generations of knowledge here that have passed down techniques throughout many years. Portland is lucky to be able to facilitate this special connection where restaurants can work so closely with farmers to create an incredible wealth of produce and offer so many different cuts of meats, and varieties of seafood and foraged offerings. “It's been a really special experience to be a part of all of this.”
Kelly can be found at Fore Street, or as one of the talented women sommeliers competing in the Grand Opening: Women in Wine Dinner: Who Paired It Better? Sponsored by Bangor Savings.
