WILL NEILSON, OWNER of Solo Bistro at 128 Front St., Bath, said it is about the fifth year his restaurant has earned the Award of Excellence. The new American cuisine restaurant is quite well-known for having one of the more extensive wine selections in the area, Neilson said.

“It’s really hard in Maine to maintain a large inventory, and the demand is huge for a couple of months and then kind of minimal for the rest of the year,” Neilson said. “I’m quite proud of having won those awards and intend to continue to.”

In terms of picking the wine list, “it’s really a function of my own personal interest and tastes,” Neilson said. He once lived in Europe and was at one point a yacht captain in the Mediterranean, where he started to drink wine in Greece and southern Italy and which explains his predilection for European and southern Italian wines. Solo Bistro offers many Italian wines, and a “hodgepodge” of other wines in its endeavor to find interesting wines, “but we’re best covered in the Mediterranean and the south of France and Italy.”

“Wine is an integral feature and we try to have a good selection of beers, too, because a moderate amount of alcohol with food is one of the great pleasures of life, I think,” Neilson said.