Portland Wine Week
LE “ELEVATOR PITCH”
Portland Wine Week is a weeklong event in the city of Portland that brings thousands of visitors to Maine every year for boutique-style, wine-based events taking place in the city’s highly-regarded restaurants, from June 10-16th, 2024. Portland Wine Week was designed to bolster Portland’s amazing community of restaurants, and help the city become a year-round destination. Since its inception in 2018, attendees from 47 states and 6 countries far and wide have traveled back to Maine year after year, and not just during that week in June. Portland Wine Week provides visitors with a backstage experience to the participating restaurants, and welcomes them into the community just like a local. It is on track to be revered among the nation’s best wine festivals but in a truly Maine way.
Sommelier Showcase Series
Project # 1.
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!
Our tight-knit team produced 10 vertical shorts optimized for Instagram and Facebook Reels. Our team achieved a 61% increase in engagement across all social platforms compared to the year before, when the same project was completed by a different team.
Grand Opening Day
There’s a phenomenon in the Portland restaurant industry — nearly all of the bars, restaurants and markets have women at the helm of the wine program. The women in wine inspired the eponymous track, which featured women winemakers or women in roles as sommeliers, wine directors, or in wine sales. Opening day events for Portland Wine Week involved the Women in Wine Luncheon and the Women in Wine Dinner: Who Paired it Better? where sommeliers compete for the best wine pairing with one of five dinner courses.
This event involves organizing dozens of volunteers, 10 sommeliers, 5 chefs and over 120 attendees. I was part of a team of 5 (including the MC and CEO!) who pulled off this event for 2024.
