Antipasto platter

Antipasto platter

Assuming a shared board of cured meats, pickled vegetables, olives, cheese and bread at the start of the meal.

A board like this sets three traps and all three point the same way. The pickles are sharper than most wine, the olives are bitter, and the cured meat and cheese are intensely savoury: sharpness flattens a soft wine, while bitterness and savoury depth together make tannin taste hard and metallic. The salt is the one thing working in the wine's favour, and it wants acidity to answer it.

Pairs Perfectly. Lambrusco Secco from Emilia-Romagna, Italy, from a serious producer. This is the regional answer and it is also the analytical one: a dry sparkling red with almost no tannin, whose bubbles cut the fat of the salami while the acidity handles the pickles. The Lambrusco category is unreliable enough that the producer matters: most of what reaches export shelves is sweet mass market stuff, so seek a serious dry secco bottling.

Pairs Well. A fuller, more savoury rosado from Rioja, Spain. Made in the old way with some time in barrel, which gives it orange peel and almond and a savoury depth that ordinary pink wine has not got. Cured meat is its natural partner.

Pairs Well. Xinomavro rosé from Amyndeon, Greece. Bracing acidity with tomato leaf and dried herb and a saline finish, nothing sweet about it at all. It clears pickles better than almost anything.

Worth Seeking Out

An orange wine, preferably a skin contact Pinot Grigio in the ramato style from Friuli, Italy, for example an Attems or a Vignai da Duline. Left on its skins so it picks up a faint grip that meets cured fat the way a red would, while keeping a white wine's freshness for the pickles.

Avoid

Tannic reds. Olives, pickles and salted meat between them make even a well made red taste hard and metallic across a whole board.

Failing That

A Valpolicella, Veneto, Italy.

If All Else Fails

Beaujolais Villages.

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