I was in Greece the other week for what I appreciate few of you would regard as work, and every winery we visited offered some kind of food at our tastings – usually a selection of cheeses, a few olives, assorted dips and spreads, and addictive, sesame-coated breadsticks. It’s much the same in Spain, but rare in the UK, where you’d be lucky to get so much as a water biscuit at a professional wine tasting. The theory seems to be that food somehow detracts from your ability to assess a wine, but why taste it in isolation when almost every reader will probably drink it with food?
Even if you’re not having a full meal, it’s nice to sit down in the evening with a glass and a snack of some kind. The Greeks and Lebanese have their meze/mezze, Spain has its tapas, and Venetians their cichetti, while even the French generally run to a few slices of saucisson and a cornichon or two. Wine is just so much nicer with a nibble, after all.
