“This Italian Hosting Secret Completely Changed My Dinner Party”
I am a firm believer that you don’t need a reason to have people over, nor do you need a special occasion to open a bottle of Prosecco DOC. In fact, some of my favourite dinner parties have been the ones with the least planning: a few friends squeezed around the table, plates that can be passed around rather than painstakingly plated and, most importantly, something cold already waiting in the fridge.
In Partnership With Prosecco DOC
There’s a tendency to save sparkling wine for birthdays, engagements, promotions and moments that feel important enough to justify opening a bottle. I rather like the Italian approach of turning that thinking around.
Mallory, Junior Food & Drink Editor
It’s an approach the Italians have rather perfected. Keeping a bottle of Prosecco DOC chilled for friends dropping by is part of the culture of Italian hospitality, where an aperitivo doesn’t necessarily need to mark a special occasion. Sometimes someone coming over is the occasion.
So, I decided to take a little inspiration from them and host my own. No complicated three-course menu, no spending the entire evening stuck in the kitchen. Instead, I filled the table with focaccia, olives, tomatoes, prosciutto, vegetables and plenty of Prosecco DOC, then let everyone help themselves.
Keeping a bottle of Prosecco DOC chilled for friends dropping by is part of the culture of Italian hospitality…
Start with something cold
My first rule of having people over is to have something ready before they arrive. Nobody wants to watch you frantically chop vegetables while they stand around wondering where to put their coat. For me, that meant a bottle of Prosecco DOC already chilled and a huge crudité platter sitting on the table. I used radishes, carrots, cucumber, lettuce, pear and peppers with a Grana Padano and basil dip on the side. It’s colourful, requires very little intervention once everyone arrives and, crucially, gives people something to pick at immediately.
I paired it with a Torresella Prosecco DOC Extra Dry. The freshness worked particularly well with all those crisp vegetables, while the parmesan brought enough saltiness to keep everyone going back for another dip. It’s exactly how I like to start a dinner party: glass in one hand, radish in the other and absolutely no formal indication that dinner has begun.
Don’t overcomplicate the food
The rest of the table followed much the same philosophy. Tomatoes at this time of year don’t need much help, so I made a simple tomato and basil salad and poured a Ponte 1948 Prosecco DOC Extra Dry alongside it. Then came one of the easiest things you can possibly put on a plate while still making people very happy: wedges of melon wrapped in prosciutto. For those, I opened a Torresella Prosecco DOC Rosé Extra Dry. Cold melon, salty prosciutto and chilled sparkling rosé is a combination I’d happily eat throughout the last warm evenings of the year.
Tomatoes at this time of year don’t need much help, so I made a simple tomato and basil salad and poured an Extra Dry Ponte Prosecco DOC alongside it.
There was focaccia for tearing and passing around, bowls of olives dotted between everything else and no actual distinction between starters and mains. People could eat what they wanted, go back for more and, importantly, I could actually sit down with everyone rather than disappear into the kitchen. Plus who doesn’t love a picky bit dinner.
We also opened a bottle of Pizzolato Prosecco DOC No Added Sulphur Organic, made from Glera grapes with no added sulphites. Crisp and fresh, with apple and pear coming through, it was another reminder of just how much variety there can be within Prosecco DOC – and a particularly easy bottle to have open alongside a table of salty, snacky things.
The bottle is worth looking at
There’s one thing I learned while putting the evening together that I suspect plenty of us don’t know: Prosecco DOC isn’t simply a generic name for sparkling wine. The DOC matters. Prosecco DOC is a protected Denomination of Origin, produced within a defined area of north-eastern Italy spanning Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, predominantly using the Glera grape.
You don’t need to memorise the geography before your next trip to the wine aisle, though. The useful bit is much simpler: look for Prosecco DOC on the bottle, and the official DOC seal on the neck label. It’s an easy way of knowing you’re buying authentic Prosecco DOC rather than assuming anything sparkling with an Italian-looking label is the same thing.
Let everyone help themselves
I’ve hosted enough dinner parties to know that the more ambitious I get, the less I actually enjoy them. The best thing I did here was make food that could sit happily on the table. Crudités can be assembled beforehand. Tomatoes take minutes. Melon and prosciutto require almost no culinary skill whatsoever. Focaccia can be torn rather than sliced. Nobody cares if the olives aren’t decanted into the perfect little bowl.
And Prosecco DOC works particularly well for this kind of loose, grazing dinner. We tried different expressions throughout the evening rather than treating sparkling wine as something reserved for the initial toast. It moved from aperitivo to the table with us, pairing with fresh vegetables, tomatoes, cheese, fruit and salty cured meat along the way.
We tried different expressions throughout the evening rather than treating sparkling wine as something reserved for the initial toast.
Sometimes having friends over is enough
By the end of the evening, the carefully arranged crudité platter was decidedly less photogenic, pieces of focaccia had migrated across the table and everyone had found the dish that called to them most.
There’s a tendency to save sparkling wine for birthdays, engagements, promotions and moments that feel important enough to justify opening a bottle. I rather like the Italian approach of turning that thinking around. Keep a bottle of Prosecco DOC chilled, put some food on the table and invite people over. The luxury isn’t just what’s in the glass. It’s having an evening worth opening the bottle for.
