What to Drink with Your Tapas

When you’re heading out for a sociable evening of tapas at your local Spanish restaurant, you’re spoilt for choice when it comes to deciding what to drink. Spain has a fine selection of wines both red and white, is the home of delectable dry, medium and sweet sherries and also boasts the original Sangria as its favourite summer aperitif.

Sangria has been a popular party drink for years but as a result has got a bad name as a sort of non-descript fruit and wine punch made with the cheapest of wine. But made properly as it is in Spain outside the tourist areas, in homes and at local fiestas, with a good young, unoaked red wine, plenty of fresh summer fruit, a dash of brandy and some freshly squeezed orange and lemon juice, then chilled overnight, Sangria is a wonderfully refreshing and festive drink that goes well with tapas on warm summer nights and when you’re in the mood to celebrate. It should be served with plenty of ice and some of the wine soaked fruit.

Tapas goes really well with the quintessential Spanish aperitif, a sherry from Andalusia. Forget about the image of old aunts sipping a glass of sickly Bristol cream sherry before dinner, sherry or jerez (pronounced hereth) as it is called in Spain is an authentic and delicious choice to accompany tapas as an aperitif or to drink throughout a meal. A good Manzanilla sherry is pale, dry and crisp with a delicate flavour and should be served chilled. Or you could go for the nutty aroma of Amontillado, still dry with plenty of flavour. A more fragrant, heavier dry to medium sherry is the oloroso with its darker colour.

You could start your tapas with one of these dry sherries and then move on to a glass of a sweeter sherry, such as the Pedro Ximenez or Moscatel with dessert if you want to enjoy a whole meal of sherry tastings.  Remember though that sherry, being a fortified wine, has a higher alcohol content than wine, ranging from 15% for the lightest to 22%, so if you are drinking it throughout the evening you’ll need plenty of water to go with it.

Spain has a fine selection of red and white wines to choose from and they all go well with tapas. After all tapas originated as a series of snacks to accompany a glass of wine before dinner. Rioja is perhaps the best known Spanish red wine, with full flavour aged in oak and Ribera del Duero is another quality red. Fine white wines from Rueda and both red and white wines from Penedes are also well recognized internationally. Cava is a fine traditional sparkling wine and there are a whole range of modern Spanish wines now being developed with different grape varieties.