Third-generation winemaker Nicola Comelli is booked to host a five-course wine dinner at D'Agnese's at White Pond, with a Comelli bottle beside each plate.
The dinner is set for 6 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 9, and the listed price is $99, cleveland.com reported. The restaurant is at 566 White Pond Drive in Akron, near White Pond and Interstate 77.
What Lands on the Table
The card opens light. A crostini trio of prosciutto, whipped ricotta and roasted artichokes is paired with 2024 Amplius Pinot Grigio. Next is Italian pumpkin flan with dolce cream and 2023 Malvasia.
The middle of the menu leaves the appetizer register. Spice-rubbed Hudson Valley duck breast comes with goat-cheese arancini, roasted carrot and Amarena cherries, alongside 2022 Soffumbergo Rosso. Then roasted wild boar chops arrive with foraged mushroom risotto and cipollini onions, matched to 2018 Pignolo.
Dessert is a stone fruit frangipane crostata, an Italian tart with shortcrust pastry, and 2021 Picolit. Five dishes, five vintages, one listed price.
A Cellar That Started in 1946
Comelli describes a 12-hectare property in the Friuli Colli Orientali denomination, in the small town of Colloredo di Soffumbergo. A December 2024 Beacon Journal column described that same town and those same 12 hectares as being in the Veneto region of northern Italy. The winery site and the column do not name the region the same way.
On the family timeline, the winery says Paolino began acquiring abandoned vineyards in the hills of Colloredo di Soffumbergo in 1946. Pierluigi began modernizing the cellar and the vineyards in 1988, work the site says has continued. Filippo and Nicola, Paolino's grandsons, are following the path their grandfather set. Nicola is the winemaker named as host for the Akron dinner.
A Holiday Stop With a Local Address
Comelli already has a paper trail at this restaurant. In that 2024 column, the writer said he had tasted the 2019 Soffumbergo at a recent dinner at D'Agnese on White Pond. He described the wine as 60 percent Merlot, 30 percent Refosco and 10 percent Cabernet, hand harvested at the estate.
The same piece said Nicola Comelli and his wife, Maria Mancinelli of Cuyahoga Falls, stop back during the holidays to visit family and pour their wines and olive oil. The Dec. 9 card is a seated pairing dinner, and the Soffumbergo on it is a 2022 Rosso, a later vintage than the 2019 the columnist drank.
Reservations are by phone at 234-678-3612.
