Wines for aperitivo: sparkling, rosé and the art of not overdoing it

Aperitivo is the only Italian meal that pretends not to be one. You say “just one glass”, then the olives arrive, then the crisps, then a board of cured meats nobody really ordered, and by nine o’clock you discover you have had dinner standing up. That is exactly why the wine you choose matters more than it seems: it has to hold up through an hour of chatter, accompany salty, fatty food, and leave the evening still open. This is not the moment for the serious red built for meditation. It is the moment for wines that make you want to talk.

Sparkling wines, obviously

Let’s start with the obvious, because here the obvious is right. Sparkling wines are built for aperitivo: lively acidity, carbon dioxide that cleans the palate, often moderate alcohol. They work with almost everything that lands on the bar, and above all with fried food, which needs a wine with bubbles almost physically.

Italy is spoilt for choice. Prosecco, with its immediate apple and pear fruit, is the most widespread and most easygoing option. The metodo classico, traditional-method, wines, Franciacorta, Trento, Alta Langa, Oltrepò, have more structure and more tension, and stand up even to a fatty salume or a cheese with a bit of character. Then there is Lambrusco, which many relegate to the Emilian lunch table but which does an excellent job at aperitivo: red, fizzy, often dry, born quite literally to sit alongside mortadella and prosciutto. A tip worth remembering: with “brut” or “extra brut” sparklers, salty food becomes an ally; with the softer ones, the residual sweetness pairs well with spicy nibbles.

Crisp whites and rosés: the party of lightness

If bubbles don’t convince you, the rule is simple: look for freshness and little oak. A young, savoury white, with no time in barrique, almost always makes a good impression. Think of the coastal and hill-country whites that are drunk chilled: a Vermentino, a Verdicchio, a Soave, a thoughtfully made Pinot Grigio, a Fiano or a Falanghina from the south. They have that saline streak that calls for the second olive and the third cracker.

Rosés deserve a word of their own, because in Italy they were long treated as second-class wines, and even today some people order them with an apologetic air. A pity. A good rosé, from Garda’s Chiaretto to Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo, from the rosés of Puglia to those of the Salento, has the freshness of a white and a touch more structure, which lets it take on salumi, little pizzas and even a fritto of fish. It is the diplomatic wine par excellence: it suits both those who wanted white and those who wanted red.

Vermouth and spritz: wine in disguise

Look closely, and a large part of the Italian aperitivo is made of wine even when it doesn’t seem so. Vermouth is an aromatised wine: European rules require at least 75% of the product to be wine, flavoured with wormwood (the genus Artemisia), with an alcohol content between 14.5% and 22%. Tradition has it born in Turin in 1786, in Antonio Benedetto Carpano’s shop in Piazza Castello, from a Moscato with herbs and spices. From there it became one of the pillars of the Savoyard aperitivo and, later, of half the world’s. It can be drunk neat over ice with a twist of citrus, but bear in mind that it is stronger than a table wine: one glass is plenty.

The spritz has a less noble and more entertaining history. The most widespread account places it in the nineteenth century, in the Veneto under the Habsburgs: Austrian soldiers and officials found the local wines too robust and asked for a splash of water to be “sprayed” into them (spritzen, in German). Like all origin stories it should be taken with a pinch of salt, but it is plausible and every source repeats it. The bitter came later: Aperol was born in Padua in 1919, Select in Venice the following year, and between the wars the habit of colouring wine with an amaro caught on. The Prosecco version we know today, on the other hand, took shape around the 1970s, and in 2011 the spritz joined the International Bartenders Association’s list of official cocktails, which specifies 9 cl of Prosecco, 6 cl of bitter and a splash of soda. The rest, namely its global conquest in the 2010s, we all watched from our café tables.

What to put on the plate

The Italian aperitivo lives on a few well-made gestures, and the pairings follow an almost elementary logic.

• Fried food (olive all’ascolana, stuffed fried olives, croquettes, battered vegetables, fried fish): sparkling, without hesitation. Acidity and bubbles cut the grease, and every bite tastes like the first.
• Olives: want savoury whites or a dry traditional-method sparkler. With dressed, spicy ones, a crisp rosé works surprisingly well.
• Salumi: this is Lambrusco’s home ground, but a well-structured rosé or a traditional-method wine with a few years on the lees will also stand up to the fat of prosciutto and mortadella.
• Fresh cheeses (mozzarella, burrata, stracchino, goat’s cheese): young, aromatic whites, or a Prosecco. Leave aged cheeses for dinner: they call for wines that are out of place at aperitivo.

Why it is not the time for heavyweights

There is a practical reason why you don’t open a fifteen-degree red with tannins to tame at aperitivo. First: the stomach is empty or nearly so, and the alcohol arrives sooner than you think. A wine that is too alcoholic turns “just one glass” into an evening that ends earlier than planned. Second: tannin, without a steak or a rich dish to counterbalance it, dries the mouth and clashes with salt and fried food, leaving a bitter, rough sensation. Third, and perhaps most important: aperitivo is conversation. A demanding wine insists on attention, and here the attention belongs entirely to the people at the table.

It is not a moral rule, it is a question of rhythm. A great Barolo does not become any less great if it waits for dinner; in fact, it gets there in better shape.

If I have to say which side I’m on: the perfect aperitivo has a wine you barely notice, in the best sense of the term. Fresh, salty, a little playful, able to accompany without stealing the show. Sparkling wines win almost every time, rosés deserve far more trust than they receive, and the spritz, for all its popularity, remains what it was at the beginning: watered-down wine for those who wanted to reach dinner with a clear head. An idea that, come to think of it, is still very much of our time.

❦