Wine with jamón and tapas
Tapas are salt, oil and garlic in small portions, and jamón ibérico is fat that melts on your tongue. In Jerez they have solved this for two centuries with wine from their own region, ice cold, in glasses you empty within ten minutes. Anyone opening a Rioja Crianza here has missed the point.
Three styles that work
- 1
Fino, en rama if you can
Fino with jamón is not a pairing but a culture. The salt of the ham and the salt of the flor lock together, the fat melts into the acidity, and at fifteen percent the wine still drinks lighter than it tastes. En rama, unfiltered, has more texture and keeps up with the ham better.
- 2
Palo Cortado with grilled tapas
Chorizo from the plancha, gambas al ajillo, pimientos de padrón: once smoke and garlic enter, you want more than a fino. Palo cortado has the nose of an amontillado and the body of an oloroso, and that is exactly enough weight without sweetness.
- 3
Cava, Brut Nature
If you want bubbles, stay in Spain. Cava from Penedès, with no dosage and a few years of ageing, has the earthy, faintly bitter tone that suits olives and fried tapas and that champagne lacks. Prosecco is too sweet and too fruity here.
Without alcohol
Alcohol-free spritz, bitter enough
With tapas you want bitter and cold, not a sweet alcohol-free wine. An alcohol-free spritz with real bitters does what a vermouth does: keeps appetite and salt in balance. Kolonne Null Spritz is the best one I tested, received as a press sample.
Frequently asked questions
Is Rioja never right with tapas?
With albóndigas or a stew it is, a young Crianza without much oak. With jamón, fish and anything fried, red loses to the salt.
How cold do you serve fino?
Six to eight degrees, in an ordinary white wine glass and not in a copita. An open bottle keeps for a week in the fridge, after which it loses its freshness.
No scores, but an opinion. The bottles I name I tasted myself; how each reached me is stated at the bottom of every review.