Last year, Haley Fortier, owner of Nathálie wine bar in Fenway and haley.henry wine bar at Downtown Crossing, noticed that something was missing in Boston. The city has excellent wines and talented industry professionals, but no big wine fair like New York or Montreal. So, she decided to make one.

One year later, Fortier has launched Femme Fête, a one-day wine festival focusing exclusively on female-led wineries.

More than 100 winemakers will be represented during the festival, with almost 50 on site representing 11 countries. Attendees can stroll through the space, learning about different wine styles, processes and flavors. And, of course, there will be plenty of sampling.

For Fortier, the festival is more than an opportunity to clink glasses and get pleasantly tipsy. It’s an opportunity to break down barriers to entry in wine culture.

“Everyone gets really intimidated around wine,” said Fortier.

“I hope at the end of the day that the programming and the oneon-one face time with these winemakers is going to start to click the lightbulbs for people.”

Education is at the forefront of the festival, culminating in two panel discussions available on a first-come basis.

The first, “Femme Fête: Boston Unfiltered,” focuses on old and new wine industry professionals in the Boston area, from longtime leaders like Cat Silirie, wine director for The Grafton Group in Cambridge; and Kate Gilarde, managing partner of omakase spot O Ya; to newer talent like Hannah Carroll, wine director for Shy Bird. The talk will be moderated by Alicia Towns Franken, cofounder of Towns Wine Co. and a longtime advocate for a more diverse wine industry.

But it’s not just about drinking wine or pairing the beverage with food. “The other part of the puzzle is trying to get people to really connect the dots between farmers and wine,” Fortier said. “If we want people to start drinking wines that are really made well and made responsibly … you’ve got to give them a vessel to be able to learn about it.”

To that end, the second panel, “The Natural Order: Three Generations of Influence in a Glass” will be a lively conversation about natural winemaking with wine writer Alice Feiring, California winemaker Deirdre Heekin and Vermont winemaker Martha Stoumen. Editor and writer Oset Babür-Winter, formerly of Food & Wine magazine, will moderate the dialogue.

Femme Fête takes place Feb. 28 at the Cyclorama in Boston’s South End. Tickets are $60 for access to the festival and the panels. The official afterparty, starting at 9 p.m. at Shore Leave in the South End, is free and open to all.

Though the festival is the heart of the week, there are lots of other related events happening Feb. 25 through March 3 at wine bars and restaurants around the city. Check those programs out on the Femme Fête website.

Fortier hopes the attendees will come away satiated, and enlightened.

“I hope people take away from the experience that they’ve learned something that maybe they did not realize or understand, or they think about wine in a way that they never thought about before,” she said.

ON THE WEB

Learn more about the festival and surrounding events femmefeteboston.com