Wines to match your meat-free meals

I should probably cover vegetarian food and wine more often than I do – vegetables and fruit ought to be an important part of every diet. They can frequently be the dominant flavour in many meat dishes so they are an important part of matching food with wine.

At home we have been trying to have two vegetarian meals a week, as well as two fish, to give a better balance to the family diet. It sounds great but when you are used to arranging veg around the meat, it requires a very different kind of cookery.

I seem to have forgotten all the lessons learned a few years back when our son turned vegetarian overnight, under, I think, the influence of an attractive classmate. I didn’t expect it would last very long as he was a keen carnivore. However it continued for over a year. As my better half is lactic intolerant, it made great creative demands on the chef, who it must be said, heaved a sigh of relief when the vegetarianism was dropped a year later (grilled bacon gets them every time).

The same chef began dreaming about croques monsieurs and spaghetti carbonara. However, we are now back on meatless Mondays and some other day too.

If cooking vegetarian foods requires a bit of creative thought, so too does matching the food to wine. However, it is not difficult. With fish dishes, white wines are used to bring life to a fairly bland food. Tannic red wines work well with the proteins and fat of red meat. Similar principles apply with vegetarian foods. Lighter vegetables, cooked or raw, with herbs and citrus go best with white wines or light red wines. Bigger, more robust flavours make a better match for red wines.

As with meat dishes, lentils, potatoes, rice, couscous and pasta act as a bland background – its what you eat with them that counts.

Many vegetables, including root vegetables, peppers, gourds and squashes, have a sweetness. Elizabeth David in Italian Food suggests trying Orvieto amabile or abboccato which are off-dry wines once popular in Italy. These she rightly suggests go very well with many of the vegetable-based dishes of Italy.

Most white wines tend to be drier these days, although I have noticed an increasing number of white wines, including many Italian whites, which have two to six grams of residual sugar. You might not notice it, particularly in acidic wines, it just takes the edge off the wines making them softer and slightly textured.

I have tried a couple of these recently with roasted vegetables (squash, peppers, onions) and they worked very well. But given the weather at the moment you might prefer to try a lighter red wine. Tomato sauces, with their acidity, are usually best with fruity white wines. I find Sauvignon Blanc goes well with lighter herby dishes, and more powerful whites such as Viognier and Chardonnay with roast vegetables. I don’t think people eat nut roasts anymore but toasted seeds and nuts are good with richer whites and reds that have been aged in oak.

Mushrooms are great with red wines; I mentioned risotto a few weeks ago but with grilled or stuffed mushrooms or as part of in a warming bean casserole you can bring out your better bottles of red wine.

Bean dishes generally call out for bigger more powerful reds, as do aubergines. I find a sprinkle of Parmesan or other cheeses often improves both wine and food.

Many vegetarians are unaware that most wines are not strictly vegetarian, and others are not suitable for vegans. The vast majority of wines are fined or filtered prior to being bottled. This not only removes sediment, but tiny particles that can cause the wine to go cloudy. The wine can be left to rest gently for a few months, but this is time-consuming and ties up capital. Egg whites are traditional (and expensive), but casein, and products derived from fish bladders and clay are frequently used. They are no longer present in the finished wine, but in most cases you have no idea what agent was used to clarify the wine.

You can assume wines that state they have not been fined or filtered are vegan. Tesco and Marks & Spencer now display a vegetarian or vegan logo on their own-label wines. Marks & Spencer have a far larger range of these in Ireland. In addition, since 2011, all wines from Australian producer Yalumba are vegan-friendly. jwilson@irishtimes.com

John Wilson's 120 Top Wines 2015, published by Irish Times Books, is in bookshops now, priced €12.99