WESTBROOK – When you think of Maine cuisine, lobster and blueberries immediately come to mind.

But barbecue? That’s way down on the list, the province of southern “good ‘ol boys” around their giant pits and smokers with no Yankees allowed.

One Westbrook company is looking to change that perception, and judging from the national exposure it’s been receiving, Maine is earning a place on the barbecue map.

Dennis Sherman is the owner of DennyMike’s brand of sauces and seasonings, which are sold all over the country, and soon, in Europe. DennyMike’s – the name comes from Sherman’s childhood nickname – makes all of its spice rubs at the Dana Warp Mill, with its sauces made and bottled in Gray. Sherman’s products, which have won national competitions, have been featured in prominent places like NBC’s “Today” show, and most recently, the company’s Fintastic rub for seafood was featured on Real Simple magazine’s website as one of “Seven Sensational Marinades, Sauces, and Rubs for the Grill.”

“It was great for us to get that exposure,” Sherman said in his sensational-smelling Westbrook production facility recently.

Locally, Sherman does frequent demonstrations at Portland’s Whole Foods Market, where he is a customer favorite.

Greg Pope, Whole Foods’ assistant store team leader, said that DennyMike’s is the top-selling local brand of barbecue sauces and rubs at the store, and the customers really enjoy his in-store demonstrations.

“He’s super popular here,” Pope said. “He’s a character. He is one of our local favorites.”

Sherman didn’t set out to become a guru of the barbecue set. The Old Orchard Beach native was first exposed to “real” barbecue during his time at the University of the Americas in central Mexico in the mid-1970s. He explained that he had a friend from Houston, and they would travel often to Texas to visit. It was there that he first experienced Texas-style dry-rub barbecue, though he joked that as a Maine Yankee, he was not allowed anywhere near the barbecue pits.

But even though he was kept away from the cooking, those visits sparked his love of barbecue and planted the seed for a future business decades down the road.

“That was my epiphany, if you will,” he said.

The seed really started to grow about 20 years later when Sherman bought a building on West Grand Avenue in Old Orchard Beach in 2000. His intention was to rehab the building and then sell it, but it came with a retail space that needed something to fill it, so he drew on his experience of working in his father’s restaurant while he was growing up and, since he knew what good barbecue tasted like, he opened a barbecue place.

At first, Sherman used commercial rubs and sauces at his restaurant, but he quickly became disillusioned with them.

“The first ingredient in the rubs was table salt and a lot of it,” he said. “And the first ingredients in the sauces was high-fructose corn syrup. So I said I was going to do something different, I said, ‘OK, I think I can do better than that.’”

Sherman began studying all the barbecue guides and recipe books he could and started developing his own rubs and sauces. And it was a lot of trial and error.

“Each one of my products went through about 30 renditions,” he said. “I had people that were willing to help me test, and most importantly, people that knew barbecue.”

Unlike most commercial products, DennyMike’s is all natural, as Sherman brings in large quantities of high-quality spices and other ingredients, including Pacific sea salt, to make his rubs, the same way he did it when he was just starting out, using a band of faithful friends to try out his creations at the restaurant.

With his band of willing testers, the restaurant’s business blossomed. But it was always meant to be a temporary thing for Sherman, and once he finished working on the building in 2006, he sold it and the restaurant and began looking for the next phase in his career.

He didn’t have to look far. Thinking that his sauces and rubs had potential, he began making them for commercial sale, moving into progressively bigger quarters in the Dana Warp Mill as the business grew.

Sherman said he came to the Dana Warp Mill as he was developing his spice rubs with a company, Urban Spice, that was based at the mill at the time. He said it was a natural outgrowth to move his production operations into the mill.

Sherman said the mill has been a good place for his production operations.

“It’s served its purpose very well for us,” he said, adding he especially likes the view of the Presumpscot River from his space. “It’s quite a nice spot.”

DennyMike’s has been making a name for itself on the national barbecue scene. Its sauces and rubs have won multiple national awards, with its Sublime Swine seasoning taking the title as the top all-purpose rub in the country from the National Barbecue Association. In addition, Fintastic was named as the top product in the Mediterranean/herb category at the same awards presentation.

“We’ve won gold medals all over the country,” Sherman said.

But Sherman is not content to rest on his laurels. He is working with a national specialty food retailer, which he declined to name, citing confidentially issues, to be featured in the company’s retail stores and catalogs.

DennyMike’s also works closely with regional locations of Whole Foods, and the products are also on the shelves in such far-flung places like Seattle, San Diego and Hawaii. Soon, the company’s reach will be global. Sherman said he is just about to expand to Europe thanks to a deal with Selfridge’s, a high-end department store chain similar to the famous London institution, Harrods.

Sherman has certainly shaken off the image of the Yankee outsider in the barbecue world, especially as he keeps winning competitions. But even as the company keeps growing, Sherman said he hasn’t lost his passion for barbecue.

“It’s a fun business to be in,” he said.

Dennis Sherman, the owner of DennyMike’s, demonstrates his barbecue technique this week. Sherman is turning the Dana Warp Mill, pictured in the background, into a bastion of barbecue superiority with his nationally distributed line of award-winning DennyMike’s seasonings.  (Photo by Rich Obrey)