Cellardoor Winery of Lincolnville is planning to open a 5,000-square-foot tasting room at Thompson’s Point in Portland next spring.

The satellite location will be known as Cellardoor at the Point and will host wine tastings, dinners, cooking classes, food-and-wine pairings and other special events. It also will have retail space for selling the company’s “Cellardoor at Home” product line, which includes jams and jellies, oils, vinegars, desserts, syrups and other food products.

The large space “will give us a lot of opportunity to do some of our bigger dinners and get creative on what kind of events we want to plan,” said Bettina Doulton, who has owned the winery since 2007.

Thompson’s Point is a 30-acre former industrial site that juts out into the Fore River. Development there will include an outdoor concert venue, a sports arena, a hotel and restaurant, a circus school, retail space, offices and residences. The Cellardoor tasting room will be in the Brick South building, along with a yet-to-be-announced bakery and cafe, just across from The Circus Conservatory of America.

The site’s developer, Chris Thompson of Portland, called the addition of Cellardoor Winery “a perfect fit.” From the beginning, one of his goals has been to attract the right mix of businesses run by people who have a focus on aesthetics and who are also good businesspeople able “to deliver something extraordinary to their patrons,” he said.

He called Doulton a “real visionary” and said plans for the tasting room, which is being designed by Phi Home Designs in Rockport, are “really imaginative and practical at the same time.”

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Cellardoor Winery in Lincolnville sits on 68 acres and includes vineyards and a 200-year-old post-and-beam barn where customers can sidle up to a horseshoe-shaped bar to taste one of the many wines made on site with grapes sourced from vineyards all over the country. The winery also owns a tasting room and retail space called The Villa in Rockport.

One of the wines that will be available in the new Portland tasting room is Vendange, a sparkling rosé made with the first grapes harvested at the Cellardoor vineyard after it was replanted with cold-hardy hybrids in 2008. That wine, made with grapes harvested in 2012, will be debuted at a release party in Lincolnville in May.

The Portland space is about 25 percent larger than her Lincolnville barn site. Doulton said she had been scouting locations in southern Maine for more than two years, including a farm-like property in Buxton, a space in Kennebunkport and properties in Portland’s Old Port. When she heard about the Thompson’s Point development during a meeting, she said, right away it seemed like what she was looking for.

“I walked in the space and these brick buildings, and it was the first time I felt as confident as I did when I walked into the (Lincolnville) barn seven years ago,” Doulton said.

She said she expects the new location to attract tourists off the highway, looking for a diversion, and people from the city.

“That’s going to be fun to engage that really youthful energy and the foodie crowd and people looking for a slightly different experience in Portland,” she said.


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