Marinated olives

Marinated olives

Assuming a bowl of green and black olives in olive oil with herbs, garlic and citrus zest, served before the meal.

Olives are salty and bitter at the same time, and the bitterness is the problem: it stacks on tannin and turns any red harsh. The salt pulls the other way and wants acidity to answer it. This is also the first thing anyone eats, so the wine has to be light enough to leave room for the meal.

Pairs Perfectly. Fino Sherry, Jerez, Spain. Aged under a living veil of yeast, which leaves it bone dry, saline and faintly almondy, with no tannin at all and a savoury weight that the lighter coastal Manzanilla does not have. Olives in oil have body, and Fino has the substance to meet it while the salt in the glass and the salt on the plate cancel each other out.

Pairs Well. Provence Rosé, France. Pale, dry and herb scented, with the grapefruit and garrigue register that runs straight into a herb marinade. It is the aperitif answer almost everyone already has a bottle of.

Pairs Well. Vermentino, Sardinia, Italy. Lemon, green herb and sea salt from an island where olives and this wine grow beside each other. Light enough to open a meal rather than end one.

Worth Seeking Out

Xarel-lo from Penedès, Spain. Usually buried inside a Cava blend and rarely seen on its own, where it turns out to have a fennel and green apple bite and real structure. Fennel against a herb and garlic marinade is a direct hit.

Avoid

Tannic reds. Olive bitterness and wine astringency compound into something genuinely unpleasant, and the salt is not enough to rescue it.

Failing That

A Muscadet, Loire, France.

If All Else Fails

Pinot Grigio, northern Italy.

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