Which wine goes with which pizza.
One thing matters more than everything else, and it takes about a minute to explain.
There is no wrong answer, and nobody is marking you.
The fear here is not the wine, it is ordering the wrong one in front of other people. Somebody once told you that red goes with meat and white with fish, and you have been quietly worried about breaking a rule ever since.
That rule is a hundred years old and was mostly about French food. It has very little to say about a Neapolitan pizza on a hot evening in Larnaca.
What follows is not a set of rules. It is a few things that reliably work, and you are free to ignore all of them and drink what you like. We will not say a word.
Acidity. That is the whole trick.
A pizza is tomato, fat and salt on top of bread. Tomato is acidic, and mozzarella is fat. A wine with enough acidity of its own cuts through the fat and stands up to the tomato instead of being flattened by it.
A wine without that acidity tastes soft, sweet and slightly flabby next to a slice. This is why an expensive, heavy, oaky red is very often worse with pizza than a light, sharp one that costs a fraction as much.
So: light and fresh beats big and impressive, almost every time. That is genuinely most of what there is to know.
A few things that reliably work.
A Margherita is lighter than people think — tomato, fior di latte, basil, and not much else. It wants a wine that will not walk over it. A pale, sharp Etna red does this beautifully, and so does a light Cypriot white if you would rather not drink red at all.
A pizza bianca has no tomato, so the wine has to bring all the acidity itself. That is the moment for a proper dry white with some body behind it.
Anything cured — salami, sausage, ’nduja — has fat and spice, and can take a red with more weight and softer tannins.
Anything salty from the sea, or bitter, or funky — anchovies, capers, olives, artichoke, mushrooms — is where most whites give up. A fuller white holds; an orange wine, with its faint grip from the skins, is the specialist answer.
And if the table has ordered four different pizzas, do not try to solve it. Order a dry rosé. It sits between the white and the red and lets everybody down equally, which is to say not at all.
Put the red in the fridge.
Room temperature is a phrase from northern Europe, where rooms are eighteen degrees. In Larnaca in August, a red served at "room temperature" is served warm, and warm red wine tastes of alcohol and very little else.
Twenty minutes in the fridge before it is poured makes light reds taste like a different, much better wine. This is not a trend. It is the only sensible thing to do in this climate.
If a red arrives at your table cool here, it is on purpose.
- XynisteriTsiakkas · Pelendri, Pitsilia
- Corvina · Corvinone · RondinellaMonte Dall'Ora · Castelrotto, Valpolicella
- Nerello MascaleseFrank Cornelissen · Castiglione di Sicilia, Etna
- PecorinoTenuta Ulisse · Crecchio, Chieti
- Chardonnay · Nascetta · Sauvignon · RieslingLuigi Baudana · Serralunga d'Alba, Langhe
- Grenache · Shiraz · Vamvakada · XynisteriTsiakkas · Pelendri, Pitsilia
Come and test it.
Tell us what you are eating and let us pour the one that fits. That is faster than any guide, including this one, and it is what the short list is for. We stop at a hundred pizzas a day — the earlier you come, the better your chances.
The things people actually ask.
Q.What wine goes best with pizza?
A wine with high acidity and light to medium body. Pizza is tomato, fat and salt, so a fresh, sharp wine cuts the fat and matches the tomato, while a heavy oaked wine tends to taste flat next to it. Light reds, dry whites and dry rosés all work; the weight of the wine matters more than its colour.
Q.What wine goes with a Margherita?
A Margherita is relatively light — tomato, fior di latte and basil — so it suits a pale, high-acid red such as an Etna red made from Nerello Mascalese, or a light dry white. A heavy, tannic red will overwhelm it.
Q.What wine goes with a white pizza?
A pizza bianca has no tomato, so the wine has to supply the acidity itself. A dry white with some body — a Pecorino from Abruzzo or a Langhe Bianco, for example — works better than a light, delicate one.
Q.Should red wine be served cold with pizza?
In a hot climate, yes, light reds are better slightly chilled. "Room temperature" refers to northern European rooms of around 18°C; at Mediterranean summer temperatures a red served warm tastes mainly of alcohol. About twenty minutes in the fridge is usually enough.