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Salt, melted cheese and jalapeños. A pairing problem disguised as a snack.
Cava, a dry rosé, or a light Garnacha. Bubbles for the cheese, low alcohol for the chilli, cold for both.
Nachos are fried tortilla, melted cheese, salt and heat, usually with sour cream, guacamole and pickled jalapeños on top. Nobody thinks of it as a wine occasion, which is a shame, because the combination of fat and salt is one that sparkling wine handles better than almost anything else on a table.
Three mechanisms are in play and they conveniently point the same way. Fried tortilla and melted cheese coat the palate, and carbonation physically lifts that coating off in a way still wine cannot. Salt makes wine taste rounder and fruitier, so a sharp, inexpensive bottle shows better here than it does alone. And jalapeño heat is amplified by alcohol, which rules out anything strong.
The result is that a cheap dry sparkling wine, served very cold, is genuinely the right answer rather than a compromise.
Cava. Bottle-fermented like Champagne with at least nine months on the lees, which gives it a savoury, bready quality that suits melted cheese. Inexpensive enough to open without ceremony, which matters for nachos.
A dry rosé, well chilled. Fruit for the salsa and the beans, no tannin for the chilli to sharpen. A Spanish rosado is the natural pick.
Garnacha if the nachos are meat-heavy — beef chilli, chorizo. Keep it light and cool; a 15% Grenache will make the jalapeños twice as hot.
Guacamole is fatty and mild and reinforces the case for bubbles. Sour cream does the same. Pickled jalapeños bring vinegar as well as heat, and vinegar resets your palate to a very high acidity — which is one more reason to pick a wine with plenty of its own rather than something soft.
What to avoid: oaked Chardonnay, which combines with melted cheese into something heavy and cloying, and any tannic red, which the chilli will sharpen into bitterness.
Carbonation physically lifts the fat coating off the palate, which still wine cannot do. Salt then softens the wine and makes it taste rounder, so an inexpensive bottle performs above its price.
They cap the alcohol. Capsaicin heat is amplified by alcohol and sharpened by tannin, so keep the wine light and cold — and note the pickling vinegar demands high acidity too.
Only if they are meat-heavy, and only a soft, light one served cool. A big Garnacha at 15% will make the chilli twice as hot.
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