An interview regarding the Prima Materia Project in East Bay Express

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2015
A Winemaking Chef Plans Ambitious Oakland Supper
Club and Winery
By Luke Tsai
Before he became a chef, Pietro
Buttitta was a student of
philosophy, which is probably
why he seems most at home
when he’s holding forth on the
ancient Roman cookbook
Apicius, and what wines he
would want to pair with those
well-worn recipes. He’s hardly
the first Bay Area chef to
profess strong opinions about
an obscure, wine-related topic,
but in this one respect he hopes to be unique: If Buttitta successfully
launches Prima Materia, a winery and supper club (at a still-to-be
determined location in Oakland), he will likely be the only chef in the
city who makes the wine that he serves at his restaurant.
As Buttitta wrote in his crowdfunding pitch, “The goal now is to bring
these two related disciplines together in a way no one else has yet.”
In an interview, Buttitta explained that he’s a culinary school grad who
earned his fine-dining stripes at restaurants in Napa Valley and
Portland, Oregon. But the winemaking is a family legacy: His father
owns Rosa d’Oro Vineyards winery in Lake County, which is where
Buttitta has worked as a winemaker for the past eight years, juggling
restaurant gigs during the offseason.
But when Buttitta started developing his idea for Prima Materia, he
knew he wanted to be somewhere that was more densely populated
and had a great food culture. Hence, Oakland.
As for why Buttitta uses the term “supper club” instead of just calling
it a plain old restaurant, that probably also ties back to his past life as
a scholar of history and philosophy. His hope is to delve into food
history more than your typical restaurant — to have a themed meal
each week that would be built around some kind of narrative. That’s
why he wants to recreate Roman feasts from the 4th century AD and,
as a certified sommelier, figure out what wines would be suitable for
such a meal. He’d also like to do a dinner inspired by the years that
writer William S. Burroughs spent in Morocco, and another based on
the “saline marshiness” of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
If that all sounds rather heady and conceptual, Buttitta says there’s no
need to worry: He wants Prima Materia to also be a place where he can
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click to enlarge
Pietro Buttitta in the kitchen.

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host a Carolina-style barbecue, which would fit his interest in the
history of regional cuisine while also just being “nice food.”
In terms of the winemaking
process, Buttitta said he’s
mostly interested in hard-to-
find European grape varietals
and preserving their inherent
characteristics — in “figuring
out what the grapes want to be,
as far as wine is concerned.”
“I try to stay out of the way as
much as possible,” he added.
Buttitta’s goal is to make his
wine onsite at his urban winery
and restaurant in Oakland, but
of course before that can
happen, he needs to find both a
location and well-funded
investors. He launched a crowdfunding campaign to acquire funds to
purchase grapes for making what would be the inaugural batch of
Prima Materia wine, but having only raised just over $1,000 of his
$16,000 target with a few days remaining, he acknowledged that it
was a longshot at this point.
Still, even if the crowdfunding campaign falls through, the
winemaker-chef hopes to still attract private investors, secure a
space, and start construction on the winery and supper club by
sometime next spring.
Tags: Pietro Buttata, Prima Materia, Rosa d'Oro Vineyards, winemaker, winery,
supper club, Image
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click to enlarge
Buttitta wearing his winemaker's
hat.
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