Oakland Festa della Donna Sunday March 16th

Festa della Donna

Sunday March 16th

at Enoteca Molinari in Oakland

2-5pm

$89 

We’re back! With what’s turning out to be an annual Festa della Donna celebration.

Join us in honoring women’s history month with an artisanal wine and food event spotlighting local chefs and businesses.  Bring your girlfriend, sister, mother, non-binary lover—all the femme loving people in your life! This year, Little Hat and Cittavino & Co. are collaborating with even more local women owned brands to shine the spotlight on rad chicks you should already know. It’s quite a line up, we can barely contain ourselves!

Olivia of Little Hat will be slinging her southern Italian specialties and Emilia of Cittavino & Co. will make sure wine is flowing throughout, with recommended pairings for each dish as well as a tasting table featuring eight wines from four different women winemakers- you can revisit any wine as many times as you’d like! We’re starting the party off with an abundance of various antipasti, and continuing on with a three course passed meal of Italian street food favorites.

Tiziana Costamagna, an importer of artisanal Italian cheeses will be providing a tasting of her unique imports from various regions of Italy in addition to having the products on site available for purchase.

MENU

Grazing Bar

marinated gigante beans

winter giardiniera (house pickled veges)

assorted cichetti

parmigiano with walnuts & honey

pecan stuffed dates warmed in brown butter & chili

calabrian chili & bresaola chip tower

chicory & kumquat salad

miticrema cheese with confit tomatoes and fried shallots

chive butter & radishes

Passed Menu

fritto misto- fried fresh calamari & anchovy, meyer lemon

rigatoni- Beylik Farms golden tomatos, Millikin red gem onion, saffron butter, pecorino

arrosticini- Peads and Barnett marinated pork jowl and collar, rosemary, fennel pollen

Dolci

trecolore sicilian almond cookies

olive oil cake

WINE SPOTLIGHTS

Terah Wine Co. Terah Bajjalieh is a winemaker and consultant from California. A native Californian with Palestinian roots, Terah refined her unique style and found her love of wine by way of food and from her travels across the globe. She started her professional career in the hospitality industry studying at the International Culinary Institute in California. She then spent time working in wine bars, a Michelin-starred restaurant, wine education, and consulting in the Bay Area. Terah ambitiously immersed herself into the international world of wine, studying Enology and Viticulture in both Spain and France. She has completed 13 harvests in five countries: Meursault (France); Barossa Valley (Australia); Marlborough (New Zealand); Mendoza (Argentina); Sierra Foothills (U.S.); Sonoma (U.S.); Napa Valley (U.S.); The Willamette Valley (U.S.).

Marilena Barbera makes fantastic wine in the area of Menfi, western Sicily, a zone that gets little love due to the uptick and obsession over Etna and southeastern Sicilian wines. In addition to making focused wines with no additives, Marilena also studies various biotypes of her grapes- she brings an infinite curiosity which will only contribute to the overall understanding of her otherwise unknown growing zone and grapes to consumers and professionals alike.

Maria Ernesta Berucci began making wine from her family’s vineyards in 2009, and ever since she has been on our radar. She is practicing organic in the vineyards, but goes beyond and applies a biodynamic approach. The wine is spontaneously fermented with indigenous yeasts, and no addition of sulphites or other enzymes and additives. Her wines have an aliveness that's hard to explain without having tasted it yourself, give it a try! you won't be disappointed. Lazio is the region surrounding Rome and, as does the rest of Italy, has a long history of winemaking, though the wines remain relatively obscure. Lazio is actually a fascinating land with limestone and volcanic soils. Here, producers were making natural/minimal intervention wines for export before it was trendy.

Trish Nelson was born in Australia but, following her parents' work as professors, grew up in various parts of Asia. Already a world traveler, her love affair with food and wine landed her in Italy and, during this period, she happened to meet Daniela and Antonio De Gruttola from Cantina Giardino. Giardino was Trish’s introduction to natural wine exposing her to a network of like-minded, forward thinking growers throughout Italy. Through Giardino, she later met Gianmarco Antonuzzi and Clémentine Bouveron of Le Coste, working there for a year at the same time as Joy Kull, another anglophone foreigner who now makes wine around the under the La Villana label. Trish now lives in a quaint home in Località Gazzetta high in the wooded hills above the village of Bolsena, farming grapes from three different distinct sites. Starting with a couple of of scattered vineyards around the volcanic Bolsena Lake.

Joy Kull, the Swiss-American from the East Coast, found her way to the Bolsena area of Lazio in 2013. After apprenticing with Le Coste, she ventured out on her own and created La Villana. La Villana started with just a few old vineyards and a tiny garage. The first vintage was enjoyed by Joy and Simone's wedding guests in 2016.

Today, La Villana farms nearly 5 hectares of old and new vineyards and produce roughly 30,000 bottles per year. Joy’s approach is a collection of all she’s learned plus her creative spirit- the American Dream is apparent in her immediately, as she experiments with different vine training techniques to understand what works best in the wind swept hills of Gradoli. In 2021 Joy made the decision to no longer till or plough the soils, a Biodynamic adaptation, so the soils can slowly regenerate without interruption.

all wines are minimal intervention (our preferred term for 'natural') and will be a mix of white, rose', and red!