Red wine goes well with meat and white wine goes well with fish – there’s no getting away from it. The acidity in white wine brightens up and cuts through fish and the tannins in red wine react with the fat and proteins in meat, releasing flavour. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy every style of wine with vegetarian or vegan food. Follow a few pointers and you will discover a huge number of wines that work beautifully with grains, pulses, vegetables and salads.
As with meat dishes, the key to success is matching the weight or power of the dish with that of the wine. A full-bodied dish, such as an earthy bean casserole calls for an equally robust wine, while lighter, zestier food such as an asparagus tart or (once the spring arrives) a bowl of pasta primavera will go perfectly with a lighter white wine.
Keep an eye on the seasoning, too. Many vegetarian dishes take inspiration from Mediterranean, Indian and other Asian countries. Off-dry white wines, including riesling, chenin blanc, or even gewürztraminer can work really well here. Tofu is fairly bland, so look to the other flavours in the dish to help make a choice.
Some of my favourite vegetarian dishes go best with richer white wines. With cauliflower cheese, root vegetable gratins or baked fennel, I would choose a chenin blanc from South Africa, a white from the Southern Rhône made from roussanne, grenache blanc, marsanne or viognier, or an unoaked or lightly oaked chardonnay. All of these are more generous in style and work well with the earthy flavours.
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With summery dishes that include French beans, peas, and courgettes, I would choose a medium-bodied white wine. Good matches would be some of our favourite wines, including sauvignon blanc, albariño and grüner veltliner. These would also partner well with dishes featuring citrus, pasta dishes with raw tomato and herbs, as well as fresh goat’s cheese and herby dishes.
Red wine of all kinds loves mushroom recipes. Mushroom risotto with pinot noir or lighter barbera is good, but so are most red and quite a few whites. I make mushroom cannelloni with bechamel sauce that goes well with pinot, lighter syrah and Chianti. Robust baked tomato dishes, especially with beans, call out for a bigger red; a malbec from Argentina, a Chianti Classico, nero d’avola from Sicily, or a powerful Languedoc red. A recent discovery is roast aubergines with robust reds.
Matching cheese and wine is more complicated than it seems, but a firm cheese such as parmesan goes really well with most good red wines. Amarone or a Barolo is traditional in parts of Italy but really any red will do. Blue cheese is powerful, so the traditional Port, Madeira or oloroso sherry will be a good choice, especially with walnuts on the side. The smelly cheeses – Brie, Camembert, Epoisses, Milleens, and Durrus, are best enjoyed with a glass of powerful white wine.
Remember that rosé and sparkling wines, two of the most versatile wines of all, seem to go well with everything. Overall, I am very easy-going when it comes to food and wine matching. Most food goes with most wine. The only likely spoilers are dishes with lots of chilli, vinegar, or eggs.
Depending on how strict a vegetarian or vegan you are, you might want to check online to see if your wine meets the criteria. A number of treatments or additives are sometimes used to make wine, including isinglass from fish bladders, casein, or egg whites, and not all of them have this information on the label.
