The 25th of December has become an occasion to spend
time with beloved person - usually gathering around a sumptuously decked table
- even in countries where they don’t celebrate Christmas as a religious
holiday, so let’s figure out what Christmas represents in Italy, where they
basically “invented” the Christmas meal, or - at least - take it very
seriously.
Strange but
true, even if Italian Christmas culinary traditions are rich, various and
deep-rooted all along the boot-shaped peninsula, Italians are surprisingly
inadequate when it’s about to elect a wine to be traditionally consumed at
Christmas.
How can it
be?
Remember,
Italy is the country of variety. This makes a cornucopia of gastronomic
treasures of it but also an unbelievably disunited country under several points
of view.
“Cenone” and “Pranzo di Natale”: before and after the holy night
The main
distinction in Italian Christmas traditions consists in the time of the same
Christmas meal.
In southern
regions they use to have a rich dinner - they call it “cenone”, that literally
means “big dinner” - with fish and seafood dishes on December 24th, after
which the gathered family goes out to attend the Mass at midnight.
In the
northern regions, on the other hand, they traditionally have a sumptuous lunch
on December 25th,
usually consuming filling pasta and meat dishes. They simply call it “pranzo di
Natale” (Christmas lunch) but it’s far from being as inoffensive as its name
suggests.
Every region,
every town and basically every family has its own traditional Christmas menu,
usually composed of local traditional dishes, prepared every year according to
particular, family recipes, that are handed down from one generation to
another. This means that wines consumed on Christmas can vary a lot from area
to area, with the only common peculiarity of being of a superior quality than
usual.
In Piedmont
they uncork Barolo and eat “ravioli del plin” and braised beef, while in the area
around Verona they drink Amarone with risotto and game.
By Rome they
can make a toast with some high quality Grechetto, while grated scallops fill
the room with their attracting aroma, and by Naples glasses are filled with
Falanghina, Greco di Tufo, Fiano di Avellino and Biancolella, while dishes are
full to the brim with mussels, spaghetti with clams and codfish.
Happy
Christmas (meal is over)
Once the meal
is over - be it the dinner or the lunch - Italians have present, “globalized”
traditional desserts.
They usually
already have had local traditional Christmas desserts, like struffoli in
Naples (fried small pieces of sweet dough kept together in a donut shape with
honey and candied fruit) and presnitz in Trieste (a cake of
Austro-Hungarian origin made of a sort of phyllo dough filled with a troubling
quantity of dried fruits and liqueur), but at the very end of the meal they
have a slice of one of the two most representative Christmas cakes: panettone
(originally from Milan) or pandoro (from Verona).
Both these
two cakes can nowadays be purchased in supermarkets for a few euros (even if
the artisan ones produced in bakeries and pastry shops are still far better
products) and are sold every year in tons.
Together with
these cakes, for some still inexplicable reason, Italians drink sparkling
wines.
All I want
for Christmas is bubbles
Although
Italy produces great sparkling wines that can be enjoyed throughout the meal,
be them champenoise methods from Franciacorta or Prosecco di Valdobbiadene and
Asti Spumante made by Charmat-Martinotti method, Italians (at least, many of
them) seem to lose their minds on Christmas, and they pair them with panettone
and pandoro.
Asti Spumante
is a sweet sparkling wine that is traditionally drunk at the end of a Christmas
meal more or less all over the country, thanks to its sugar contents, that
makes it go just barely decently with cakes. Its bubbles still make the pairing
appear like a forced marriage, because neither pandoro nor panettone are fatty
enough to stand up to them.
As an
alternative, some kinds of Prosecco are also popular, because this sparkling
wine is bottled in three different kinds, according to its sugar remains, and
the so called “dry” version can contain up to 32 grams of sugar per liter,
which makes a pretty sweet wine of it.
Unfortunately,
the marriage with panettone and pandoro is not happier than the one made by
Asti Spumante, but it doesn’t seem to stop Italians from perpetrating this
barbarity.
Moreover,
some also insist in pluming their papillas by pairing desserts with brut,
non-sweet, sparkling wines, too.
