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Certified Sommelier · WSET II · Michigan · Global

Mrs.
VinoKristen Carlson

Certified Sommelier. 15+ years in sales, eight inside Michigan hospitality. She curates wine lists, builds beverage programs, trains floors and runs the dinners. Her first list earned a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence.

Start a conversation The work
2024Wine Spectator
Award of Excellence
189Bottles on my
award-winning list
1,000+Clients nationally
16MOrganic views
8Years in the
wine industry

Services

A program worthy
of the food

Built for chef-driven, independent restaurants. Every engagement starts the same way: on site, in your room, reading your list against your own menu.

My Services

PDF · 4 pages · 622 KB

Start here

Complimentary consultation

A no-cost visit before anything is agreed, whether you are building a program from nothing, refreshing a tired one, or want a second read on what you have. How well your list complements your menu, how the beer, cocktail and non-alcoholic offerings hold up, how you store and pour by the glass. Plus what the floor needs: wine education, and tableside service to Court of Master Sommeliers standards. You keep a written snapshot and one free quick win.

Build or refreshStaff educationTableside serviceWritten snapshotNo cost
Inquire → Lists

Wine list development

A curated list matched to your menu, your price point and your guests, scaled to the room rather than volume for its own sake. Preservation technology makes reserve pours by the glass viable, so a premium bottle is no longer opened for one guest. Dessert pairings, a category most lists leave on the table. A proper sparkling section for the nights people are celebrating.

CurationBy the glassPreservationSparkling
Inquire → Tastings

Monthly tasting series

A recurring themed series that builds a returning base and fills the slower nights. Five or six wines over 60 to 75 minutes, guided and paired to your menu and the season, with attendance capped to keep it intimate and tiered pricing for casual and reserve-level guests. Promotional support and staff training come before every event.

Monthly5 to 6 winesCapped seatingStaff training
Inquire → Dinners

Wine dinners

Quarterly multi-course dinners built with your culinary staff. Four or five courses against five or six wines, on seasonal and regional themes, drawn from direct relationships with the producers. Hosted tableside, so every pairing is introduced in person. Priced and positioned as a signature ticketed night.

Quarterly4 to 5 coursesHosted tablesideTicketed
Inquire → Membership

Wine club

Recurring revenue and a reason to come back, run as an in-restaurant pickup club. Two monthly tiers of two-bottle selections, with an optional reserve add-on of allocated and library bottles for members chasing something rarer. Discounts, priority seating at dinners, an exclusive pour at every tasting, a bottle on their birthday. Pickup nights double as mini-tastings.

Two tiersReserve add-onMember poursRepeat traffic
Inquire → Hospitality

Multi-concept programs

For owners with more than one property, a coordinated strategy across concepts. Each room gets a wine identity matched to its own cuisine, so an Italian-forward restaurant and a Latin American one carry lists built for them rather than one list stretched across both. Shared guest lists and cross-venue dinners create extra ticketed nights without duplicating the sourcing, and training across properties is streamlined.

Per-concept listsCross-venue eventsShared training
Inquire →
Chef Matt Scitney plating on the pass in a working kitchen
Chef Matt Scitney, on the pass

In-home experiences

She pours.
He cooks.

Every dinner is composed for one table. The menu and the pairings are built together by hand, shaped around your home, your style and the occasion, then cooked and poured in your own dining room by the two people who designed them. Culinary artistry and sommelier service at the standard you would travel for, without leaving the house.

Chef Matt Scitney Culinary partner, Mrs. Vino LLC · Since 2018

Twenty years in professional kitchens, now at RH Birmingham. He has opened concepts from nothing and been brought into rooms that needed saving. He cooks local and seasonal, works the sustainable supplier relationships himself, and teaches the rest of the kitchen while he does it.

Plan a dinner

The magnum opus

The room
she built

Five years of tasting. One year to curate. A 189-bottle list built from an empty cellar, and a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence in its first year on the floor.

  • 189 bottles, her first list, chosen from nothing
  • 25+ Coravin pours by the glass, Riedel stemware throughout
  • Curated through wine distributors and auction houses, $40 to $2,200 a bottle
  • Michigan's only sommelier-led tableside disgorgement and sabrage
  • Staff trained to Court of Master Sommeliers, WSET and CSW standards. The award has held every year since.
Kristen Carlson seated beneath the oxblood arches and stained glass of The Wine Grotto

The Wine Grotto at St. John's Resort, Plymouth

Press

A name Michigan knows

Hour DetroitHoliday issue · December 2023Read → Detroit Free PressSeptember 2023Read → Detroit NewsSeptember 2023Read → Metro TimesAugust 2023Read → Michigan Wine CountryFeatureRead → Michigan Meetings + EventsWinter 2024 · Page 14Read → Voyage OhioInterviewRead → Voyage MichiganInterviewRead →
CBS NewsLive segment · 2026
WJR RadioOn-air interview

Published work

She writes it too

Press coverage is what other people say about her. This is the other column: work she was commissioned to report and write herself.

Two non-alcoholic cocktails on a bar, garnished with a nasturtium, photographed for the Liquid Assets feature
Edible WOW, June 2024
Edible WOW

June 2024 · Feature

Liquid Assets

The buzz without the booze

This movement is here to stay, without judgment.

A reported feature on Michigan's non-alcoholic boom, written for Edible WOW: Castalia at Sfumato, the Detroit fragrance house that pours what it sells; Little Saints and its nootropics; Unity Vibrations brewing kombucha beer in Ypsilanti; and Belle Lavande, growing eight of the 450 lavender varieties on forty acres in Plymouth. Kristen covered the category before she went to work in it.

Photography by Chuk Nowak

Read at Edible WOW

In development

In The Vineswith Mrs. Vino

A documentary series on the people, land, and craft behind Michigan wine, told with Monty Don's patience for a place and Bourdain's honesty at the table.

“I want to expose people to the agricultural practices that create extraordinary wine — in the one region on Earth defined by freshwater.” Kristen Carlson
Read the series story
Kristen Carlson with a glass of champagne on a blue velvet sofa beneath a brick arch Kristen Carlson laughing with a glass of red wine in front of a wine rack Kristen Carlson in red, tasting a glass of red wine against a red textured wall

The thesis

The only wine region
defined by fresh water

Michigan holds more fresh water than any wine region on Earth. Glacial soil, five AVAs, and a coastline that decides what ripens and when. Kristen's work starts in the dirt, with the families who farm it, and ends at the table.

  • Leelanau Peninsula
  • Old Mission Peninsula
  • Fennville
  • Lake Michigan Shore
  • Tip of the Mitt
Kristen Carlson with a glass of red wine before a wall of bottles

Availability

Let's talk

Tell me the room, the date, and what you're trying to fix. You'll hear back within two business days.

313-572-O72O
kristen@mrsvino.com