PORTLAND WINE WEEK 2024 FEATURE: SOMMELIER Lauren Smallidge of Crown Jewel
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!
Lauren’S Portland Wine Week Events:
In the Portland restaurant scene, lots of businesses are run by a tight-knit team consisting of just a few folks who wear a lot of hats. On any given day you might pop into a local restaurant and see a talented server also expertly describing their wine list, or popping behind the bar to mix your cocktail. Lauren Smallidge is one of those jacks-of-all-trades who serves, bartends, and designs the whole beverage program at Crown Jewel: a small, seasonal restaurant with a big personality and even bigger flavors.
A bartender by trade, selling wine has always been part of her career – but new to her this year is researching and buying wines for the 7th summer season of Crown Jewel. Lauren is firstly a cocktail savant but now that her multifaceted role includes designing the wine list, she’s diving head first into the world of wine to tackle the challenge of creating a list fit for island life.
Crown Jewel is a flamingo pink, tiki-style restaurant perched on the Diamond Cove side of Great Diamond Island, one of the inhabited islands of Casco Bay. About a 45-minute ferry ride from Portland, it’s not a place you stumble into by accident. “Crown Jewel is an escape … [Since] you have to take the ferry there, or sometimes even a sailboat, people are already in a good mood. I just have to keep the vibes going!” Says Lauren, and that is exactly what she does – her cocktail creations and wine selections are vast and the perfect fit for the variety of guests that show up on the island. Fine boutique champagne for birthday or anniversary celebrations; tropical tiki drinks for private yacht parties; a heavily-garnished punch bowl for bachelor/ettes; dry, summer-y rosé for kayakers; crisp, cold beers for captains and their deckhands, a general store stocked with canned wines, sodas and beers ferry-goers can carry-out with them, and fine wines of every style for any other kind of islander!
Lauren is from Arizona and her love of the southwest is evident in her selection of a Blanc de Blancs from Gruet in New Mexico, and the mezcal, piñon and green chile cocktail on the menu. She was drawn to Maine when she binge-read the novels of Stephen King during her many free hours in the lockdowns of the pandemic, when bars and restaurants were closed. Though her island life is quite different from his plots, she’s satisfied with what she’s found in Maine.“I definitely fell in love with Portland… The uneven cobblestones, being right next to the water, the crisp, clean air, and sea breeze.”
At Crown Jewel, she and the rest of the staff prioritize being a hospitable, relaxing, “island life” kind of escape for anyone who comes. However, setting the vibes for a good party is only part of the story, strong product knowledge is an integral part of their service. As the one responsible for training the staff on wine and cocktails, Lauren adds, “I'm excited to teach everyone about the inspiration behind my cocktails and what I have researched about the wines that I've chosen, and how they're going to pair well with the food.”
You can catch Lauren roller-skating around Portland, on the Casco Bay ferry lines, out at Crown Jewel, or as one of our talented competitors in the Grand Opening Women In Wine Dinner: Who Paired It Better? Sponsored by Bangor Savings!
