COPPOLA SALUTES ITALY AT BROOKLYN FESTIVAL

BARBARA MURRAY

NEW YORK -- Movie director Francis Ford Coppola hosted an Italian street festival June 11, featuring a multitude of beverages and celebrating the Morisi-Coppola Pasta Factory, located in the middle of Eighth Street in Park Slope in Brooklyn.

The event was dubbed Festa Macaroni, billed as a celebration of Coppola family food, wine and music. Francis Coppola himself was there, as was Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, who read a proclamation honoring Coppola's late father, Carmine.

Pastas and sauces from Francis Coppola's Mammarella line were served, along with wines from his Neibaum-Coppola Estate Winery in California.

The Coppola wine -- red, white and a Chardonnay -- was poured, along with Olde Brooklyn Sodas, half-liter bottles of Real Pure Natural Spring Water in iced tubs, and Pellegrino sparkling water in the 8.45-ounce size. Budweiser beer was there, too. Espresso by Illy Caffe of North America was also on the menu, and Ciao Bella Gelato, Irvington, N.J., donated the frozen desserts.

Crusty bread was provided for dipping in Mammarella organic olive oil. The rustic pastas were quatrefiore, farfallone and gemelli cuts, all from the factory a few feet away. Sauces were Mammarella's Pomodoro Basilico and Puttanesca, displayed under covered stands with baskets of fresh tomatoes, eggplant and basil nearby.

Steve Geisler, president of three-year-old Olde Brooklyn Beverage Co., along with co-founder and Senior Vice President Dave Kreitzer and Chief Financial Officer Steven M. Wise, handed out cold sodas with abandon.

"We're in Waldbaum's, King Kullen, Stop & Shop, H-E-B in Texas, in the kosher section; and in ShopRite in Philadelphia," Wise said.