How to match wine with vegetables
At a recent tasting, I got chatting to a winemaker from Australia’s Clare Valley as I bravely made my way through his wares: a ripe, leathery shiraz and a deep, dark cabernet sauvignon that put me in mind of blackcurrant bushes,These were serious wines – and good value, too,A generation ago, such gutsy New World reds were all the rage, but now, lamented the winemaker, gen Z was more interested in lighter, cooler-climate wines, lower on the alcohol and brighter on the palate,The Guardian’s journalism is independent,We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.
Learn more,He had two theories on this,One was vanity: no one on Instagram or TikTok wants to drink a red wine that stains their teeth, which is bad news for producers of high-tannin wines such as malbec and cabernet,And, two: it’s also to do with the changing western diet,Aussie shiraz is the archetypal sausage-on-the-barbie wine; Argentinian malbec is a steakhouse cliché; and, in France, malbec is mainly grown around Cahors in the south-west, land of heavy cassoulets and fat-tastic magrets de canard.
You need something with a bit of muscle to stand up to all that,So it stands to reason that as meat becomes less central to our plates, a little of the prestige may fall away from your classic, ahem, meat wines,Still, this begs the question: what to drink when vegetables are the star? Well, just as plant-centred cooking requires a little more creativity than, say, frying a steak, so, too, does matching wines,That said, you can easily overthink this stuff – after all, a floral white with a little acidity is an excellent match for green spring vegetables: think Austrian grüner veltliner and Spanish (or Portuguese) albariño, or the rarer albillo,Then again, it rather depends on how you’re cooking said veg.
If you’re adding a little char, you may want some oak.If you’re pairing with cream or coconut, some sweetness and tropical fruit won’t go amiss.I’d opt for an Alsatian gewürztraminer or torrontes from the Argentine Andes for Romy Gill’s south Indian-style asparagus.If you’re more in the mood for a red, well, aubergines, mushrooms, roots and beans are your friends – though, again, it depends on context.To my mind, there’s no finer accompaniment to a nice garlic- and tahini-drenched meze lunch than a bright young Bekaa Valley red, for example.
A Spanish-style bean stew may call for a nice tempranillo or old-vine garnacha, or one of those lovely rustic south-western French wines, like the braucol in today’s pick,Likewise, if you’re making a strong hard cheese the star (see Simon Rogan’s recipes, you can pull out something with a little more oomph,A nice New World cabernet, perhaps? Wine is, after all, a vegetable of sorts,Kew Gardens Albillo 2024 £16,99 Laithwaites, 12.
3%.A spring salad of a wine: peachy-fresh, with excellent body.Tesco Finest Torrontes £9 Tesco, 12.5%.Pineapple-scented, high-altitude Argentine grape that’s great with southern Indian food.
Waitrose Loved & Found Braucol £9.25 Waitrose Cellar, 12.5%.A friend to beans, and pretty much everything else.Château Musar Jeune Red 2022 £16.
90 VINVM, 14%.Demands an alfresco meze lunch.
How to match wine with vegetables
At a recent tasting, I got chatting to a winemaker from Australia’s Clare Valley as I bravely made my way through his wares: a ripe, leathery shiraz and a deep, dark cabernet sauvignon that put me in mind of blackcurrant bushes. These were serious wines – and good value, too. A generation ago, such gutsy New World reds were all the rage, but now, lamented the winemaker, gen Z was more interested in lighter, cooler-climate wines, lower on the alcohol and brighter on the palate.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link
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The weather lately has been as temperamental as peas in pods. But peas are even harder to read than the sky: some pods contain sweet things no bigger than peppercorns, which explode when you bite them; the contents of others, however, are closer to small ball bearings, their size very likely a sign that all the natural sucrose has been metabolised and transformed to pea starch. The best thing for the tiny ones is to snack on them alongside a bit of cheese, whereas the path for big ones is the same as for dried peas, so pea and ham soup or a long-simmered puree.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link
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Asparagus butts are a particularly tricky byproduct to tame because they’re so fibrous. I usually cut them very finely (into 5mm-thick discs, or even thinner), then boil, puree and pass them through a sieve (as in my green goddess salad dressing and asparagus soup), but even then you’ll still end up with a fair bit of fibrous waste. Enter asparagus-butt butter: a recipe that defies all odds, making the impossible possible by transforming a tough offcut into an intense compound butter that’s perfect for grilling or frying asparagus spears themselves, or for eggs, bread, gnocchi or whatever you can think of. The short fibres brown and caramelise in the butter, and in the process become the highlight of the dish, rather than the problem.This transforms an unwanted byproduct into an intense expression of the plant’s flavour
Thoran and chaat: Romy Gill’s Indian-style asparagus recipes
Spring’s first asparagus always feels like a celebration, but there’s so much more to cooking those spears than just butter and lemon. Here, those tender stems combine with bold Indian flavours in two playful dishes. The thoran, inspired by Keralan home cooking, involves stir-frying asparagus with coconut, mustard seeds and curry leaves to create something warm and comforting (my friend Simi’s mum always used to drizzle it with a little lemon juice to give the flavours a lift). The chaat, meanwhile, tossed with tangy tamarind, yoghurt, spices, crunchy chickpeas and sweet pomegranate, is a delicious snack or side. Together, they show how versatile asparagus can be: easy to cook, vibrant and moreish even in unexpected culinary traditions
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