The Coffele Dinner at Enoteca Drago...

The annual Coffele dinner during Vinitaly at Enoteca Drago in Soave was...well. Perfect.

A truly wonderful evening with great food, splendid company and of course, lots of Coffele wine.

The attendees included a number of Coffele wine distributors, clients, friends of the family, 2 Masters of Wine, Giovanna and Giuseppe Coffele (Chiara and Alberto's parents), the founder of a new wine search engine and journalists in the industry...The amount of wine knowledge at Enoteca Drago this particular Saturday night was overwhelming and just a bit intimidating for someone who considers themselves still quite the novice when it comes to wine.

The night started off with a buffet of freshly sliced prosciutto, oysters, mussels and clams served on the patio at Enoteca Drago...and a tasting of older vintages of some of the Coffele wines, such as Alzari and their Soave Classico.

We then moved inside and were treated first to a plate of risotto with asparagus served with Ca' Visco...and then came one of my favorite dishes at Enoteca Drago...Filetto di Manzo, which you cook at the table with something like a hibachi grill. Buonissima!!

So simple, but so tasty. The meat arrives at the table perfectly sliced and ready to be placed on the grill for as short/long a period as you would like. Add a little olive oil, salt and pepper after the meat has been cooked and your tastebuds are in for a treat. This dish was served with Nuj, one of 2 red wines that the Coffele estate produces (75% merlot and the remaining 25% being a combination of cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc).

Dessert was next...served with the sweet nectar the Coffele family calls "Le Sponde," their Recioto di Soave.

It was then time for some amaros (Italian herbal liqueurs, drank mainly after-dinner as a digestif to settle the stomach a bit) and some limoncello and grappa. My preferred amaro is Montenegro...but there are a number of others, such as Jagermeister (who knew) and Braulio.

Finally at around 1:30am...it was off to Cavo, a bar located in San Bonifacio and the 2nd locale where my bartender preferito works.

The crew did dwindle a bit in size after dinner.

The long-haulers included myself, Chiara, Pete and Franz, Doug Cook (friend of Chiara's from California and founder of the new wine search engine called Able Grape - www.ablegrape.com), Danny Boucher (don't know quite how to describe Danny...thinking a password protected separate section may be required) and Filippo Pistone (Chiara's distributor from NY and the man wearing my scarf in the group photo).

I lost my scarf in a guessing game of what combination of flavors/ingredients were in a particular drink...The correct answer was liquirizia (a fairly dense, licorice flavored liquor). Doh!!!

- Zucca