The Rules of Drinking in Italy
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The Rules of Drinking in Italy
I’ve always known that there’s a certain flow and ritual to meals in Italy (apertivos, then antipasti, primi piatti in the form of pasta, meat or fish for secondi piatti, cheese, salad, dessert, espresso, and digestivos). But Peggy has taught me that drinking has its own set of protocols. “An Italian would never greet you at the door with their biggest red wine. If they did, guests would be drunk before any food was served,” she says. “There’s an order and logic to how they drink.”
That means you generally start with a light, effervescent beverage, such as a gin and tonic stirred with local Amalfi lemons or an Aperol Spritz, the classic Italian orange liqueur stirred with Prosecco. As the meal begins and pushes into antipasti, drinks shift to white wines or sparkling varieties like Spumanti. Next up are the red varietals of wine for which Italy is so famed. And finally, to aid digestion after the meal, is the digestivo, an herbal infusion such as bitter amaro or citrusy limoncello and agrumi. On the boat, we’ve kept to the proper order but have stretched the timeframe to match the slow ebb of life on the sea. Fizzy drinks start in the mid-afternoon and digestivos have still been flowing at 1 and 2 a.m. At first it seemed gluttonous. But with nothing more to do of a day than visit the markets for the day’s meals and glide across glassy waters to our next port, everyone on board has gotten pretty good at this Italian rite.
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