Order a glass of wine in Italy and you never drink alone. A little something to eat always turns up on the bar or cafe table.
In the past, what the waiter brought was usually bizarrely un-Italian, whether potato chips or peanuts, but on this trip it bordered on a smorgasbord. From the first bar on, every drink was accompanied by a heaping plate of savory sensations: puff pastries filled with pesto or sausage; focaccia laced with olives or anchovies; grissini wrapped in prosciutto or soppressata; crisp squares of risotto with sage or frittata with peppers; olives and chunks of cheese and slices of salami. Always, the only charge was for the wine.
Italians call the concept aperitivo, which is simply translated as "aperitif." But these days it is much more than a drink, almost like tapas. As a euro-generation resident! of Turin said, a word that used to mean "let's go have a drink before dinner, to perk up our appetites" now means "let's go drink and eat and maybe skip dinner altogether."
Sociologists can debate whether the new expanded aperitivo is good or bad in a country where meals have always started with antipasto and ended five courses later, and whether it is an outgrowth of more work and less money (not to mention marriage) among the young. All I know is that every encounter made me rethink what to serve before dinner, or even instead of dinner, back home.
My friend Diego Orlando, a photographer who lives east of here in Veneto, put it best: "With aperitivo, every region, house, bar, town, year has something to serve you. Could be salami, could be cheese, could be something more complicated, but the idea is, 'You're drinking with me, I'll find something in my house to eat, but I don't know what I have, we'll see.' So everything easy to eat is used to se! rve with wine before lunch or dinner."
Easy to eat also means easy to fix. With the right food on hand — salami, cheese, olives, bread — aperitivo is just a slice away.
My new inspirations came constantly. At a cafe on a piazza in Asti, a town about an hour southeast of Turin, a single glass of wine arrived with four tiny panini, each filled with a different cured meat (prosciutto, two different salami, sausage), the little pile crowned with a slice of hard-cooked egg drizzled with olive oil and dusted with oregano. On another rainy night, two glasses of wine at a coffee bar and pasticceria here were served with six tramezzini — triangular mini-sandwiches on white bread with red caviar, prosciutto, egg and more — and a second plate of tiny puff pastry savories with anchovies and pesto. And on our last night we decided we didn't need dinner after sharing what a wine bar called Rosso Rubino Enoteca served with our two glasses: a small plate p! iled high with meat wrapped around grissini, different olives, mozzarella, Parmigiano-Reggiano, salami and little squares of frittata.
Always, the food was meant to absorb alcohol, very delicately. Most of it is straight out of the Italian larder: cured meats, cheeses, olives, breadsticks. But just as often it is whipped up in the kitchen, with savory tidbits such as leftover risotto fried into crisp squares or roasted peppers stuffed with tuna mousse.
Occasionally aperitivo resembles a good old-fashioned American happy hour with unlimited buffet, which opens up more main-course possibilities. At Free Volo, a sidewalk cafe here, we heaped plates with bocconcini, prosciutto, salami, olives, grissini, even pasta salad with tomatoes and basil (yes, in Italy, and no, no more exciting than it ever is).
Beyond memories, what I took away from aperitivo was new inspiration for hors d'oeuvres. It had never occurred ! to me to serve tonnato sauce, the creamy tuna-anchovy-caper spread traditionally spooned over poached veal, with drinks. But after watching so many young Italians scoop it up on grissini and spread it onto bread, I think it will be a staple in my wine go-with file.
Similarly, I had never thought of deep-frying an olive, but after encountering one stuffed with meat in a crunchy breading, I came home with a new reason to improve on perfection.
Instead of braised pork and veal enriched with prosciutto, this version just uses soppressata minced with Fontina.
And I had never thought of turning risotto into cocktail food, but it makes sense considering the real thing is always so much better fried up the next day.
(Somehow, making it just to turn it into something else guarantees you will produce the best risotto you ever attempted.) The little crispy squares go well with any wine or with other drinks.
I ! also associate puff pastry more with France and normally avoid it at all costs, having been humiliated by it in restaurant school. But it seemed to be as essential as salumi in Italy and, luckily, is now available from good commercial producers in this country and absurdly easy to use for aperitivo. You can fold it over anything savory: pesto, anchoiade, plain anchovies, tomatoes, roasted mushrooms.
Then there is the grissini factor. These anorectic breadsticks are known as the pride of Turin, but they are heavily exported and work even better as a vehicle for aperitivo snacks than they do as an alternative to bread. Bars in Italy wrap prosciutto or soppressata around them, or just set them out with cheese to munch on.
And cheese may be the most surprising, and satisfying, solid food for aperitivo. Traditionally eaten at the end of a meal, it almost works better with alcohol before dinner.!
A tangy Fontina or pungent Parmigiano-Reggiano or especially a salty-wet mozzarella is the best appetite stimulant with wine for a cocktail hour that extends so far into dinner it can supplant it.
Americans, of course, have thought this for years.
Even as food has become a bigger part of the ritual of aperitivo in Italy, drinks will always be the essential ingredient. Coke does turn up on the occasional cafe table, but more often alcohol is involved. And it's not always what you would expect.
Walk into the sleek new cafe called Circus at what Americans would consider happy hour and you'll find a back wall arrayed with hard liquor of every description, but people at the bar drinking wine by the glass with their grissini and pistachios.
In the club district after 10 p.m., aperitivo might mean a beer, particularly local Menadea, or even a mojito. In many of the stylish cafes under the arcades lining every street in the center of town, you can order a glass of wine, a soda or an aperitivo della casa, a cocktail usually involving vermouth, the infused white wine! that originated here more than 200 years ago. And if you mention aperitivo to anyone younger than 30, you'll hear that a drink called a spritz is the ticket.
Mostly, though, what I drank and watched being drunk was that most Italian of elixirs: wine. And not Prosecco, the sparkling wine usually poured elsewhere in Italy. It makes sense, as you could indulge in aperitivo every day for nearly three years without ever repeating an Italian wine. (At a Slow Food cheese expo in Bra in September, close to 900 were available by the glass, because of course you can't eat cheese without wine.) Just the Piedmontese varieties would keep you sipping for a couple of months.
Wine is clearly the drink of a new generation all through Italy. Stop in Veneto for an ombra, the local translation of aperitivo, and the food might be more ample and come at a price, but what is in the glass is wine, still or sparkling. Stop in a bar in a small town and take ! your choice of several varietals that once might have been held off until dinner. In Asti, the night of a palio, or horse race, through the town center, nearly everyone drinking had a wineglass in hand.
Vermouth and amari, as bitters are known, are also aperitivo possibilities, not just something to wave over a martini glass. Vermouth is essentially white wine infused with as many as 50 herbs, spices and other flavorings, and it has a mild but fascinating flavor that does seem to perk up an appetite.
You can drink sweet Martini & Rossi or Cinzano on the rocks or mixed with club soda in what Italians call a long drink, with an optional slice of lemon or orange to give it an even fresher flavor and vibrant fragrance. Martini & Rossi, either dry white or sweet red, is also superb chilled by itself, served like sherry.
Punt e Mes is a much more bracing option, with soda water or mixed into house cocktails with other bitters, suc! h as Campari. It has a livelier and deeper flavor and finishes with a sharper edge.
Like so many aperitivo options, vermouth and amari have a relatively high alcohol content, 16% to 18%. But because the whole idea of food at aperitivo is to prevent the unthinkable in a culture obsessed with eating, a happy hour hangover is highly unlikely.
Campari, the great Italian bitters with quinine undertone, is apparently the Cosmo of Italy these days, though mixed either with club soda or in a Negroni, the classic cocktail made with gin and a drop of sweet vermouth. In cities and towns east of Turin, in Veneto, to the east, Campari is also the essence of aperitivo in the spritz.
Everyone makes it differently, but generally it's nearly equal parts Prosecco and Campari, with a splash of sparkling water in a highball glass, garnished with a cocktail olive or a slice of orange or lemon. Two sips and you can understand why an Italian would ! say the spritz is so popular that "it has changed the destiny of almost-dead pubs and bars."
The olive seems surreal, but it adds a seductively fragrant undertone. (An orange liqueur called Aperol is often used instead of Campari, intensifying the effect.) Somehow the bitterness of Campari in the sweetness of Prosecco may be the best appetite stimulant since the smell of saut?ing garlic. After one, you'll be ready for dinner.
Still, wine will always define aperitivo to me. What we mostly ordered were Piedmontese. Barbera and Dolcetto are the dominant reds, both very familiar in the United States, but much more diverse and affordable here. Both are easy to drink and ideal partners for the richness of the typical snacks.
The whites lean more toward Cortese, Gavi and Arneis, a wine that's well worth seeking out. Arneis, traditionally a blending grape, is grown throughout the Langhe DOC region but does best in Roero, which was elevated this year to D! OCG, Italy's highest wine status. It's now used primarily to make an elegant Chablis-style wine, which has had an increase in production in recent years. Arneis can be almost raspberry fruity to grapefruity tart, but it always resonates with cheese, salumi and other rich foods. All three of these Piedmont whites are light and crisp and vibrant, meant to be drunk young and often.
Sparkling wines are also lively pours for aperitivo and are omnipresent because Piedmont produces half of Italy's entire output. On different stops we had either Moscato d'Asti, a round and fruity wine served in a flute, or spumante. Both at the source are worlds away from the cloying cheap wines exported in bulk. (We never had Prosecco, but weirdly, we were served Spanish Freixenet with our little panini and crostini in one bar, in Pollenzo.) Always, the effervescence counters the richness of typical bar snacks.
Finally, there's the most fascinating crossover between stil! l and effervescent: Brachetto, a bright red wine with subtle bubbles. When I have had it in the United States, it has seemed more suited to dessert. But where it is made, in the home of the aperitivo, it communicates best with the savory side.