Albert Blaize - Which Wine When: A plain English guide to the perfect wine for your favourite food

For all the friends whove ever

asked us what to drink.

This is a book for everyone who finds themselves struggling over and over again to pick a bottle of wine to drink with dinner based on anything more than a pretty label, a special offer or a vague memory.

The recommendations here will give you the knowledge and confidence you need to decide which wine will be the ideal companion to whatever youre about to cook and eat. That could be a comforting midweek supper, a special dinner for your favourite people or just a night on the sofa with a box set and snacks.

It doesnt assume you know much about wine, have a big budget or hang out in trendy wine stores. It just assumes youre a greedy person who wants to know more about which wine to drink when but doesnt know where to start.

* * *

Matching wine with food is often seen as an elite level of wine expertise something only for the real pros so why would anyone who doesnt know much about wine go there?

First, theres the additional joy and pleasure you can bring into your life with just a few small changes to something youre already doing. We drink and eat together all the time, but well-matched wine and food are so much more than the sum of their parts. When you pair food and wine thoughtfully, you elevate two already brilliant things to next-level deliciousness without necessarily spending much more or going to much additional effort.

Its also a chance to eliminate a lot of low-level stress. Weve lost count of the messages weve had from friends (hello, everyone) wondering what to serve their in-laws with lunch or what to pick up for a night in with a takeaway and a new boyfriend. If nothing else, hopefully by collecting the most common answers in one book, theyll leave us in peace.

But beyond these immediately practical, short-term fixes, theres also the fact that approaching wine through the food you love to eat is a great way into a world that can often feel vast, impenetrable and riddled with snobbism.

Plenty of people wish they knew more about wine, but it can be daunting. But thinking about what youre going to have for dinner? Thats something we all do regularly, and with pleasure. So taking familiar food that you love to cook and eat at home as a starting point will let you get to grips with wine almost without realising youre doing it. Because the good news is that if you know what you love to eat and who doesnt? youre a lot more than halfway to learning what you love to drink. After all, its still the same process of tasting and enjoying.

Even more helpfully, youll start to see that many of the reasons that a certain wine goes brilliantly with a certain food are based on principles you probably already understand instinctively when it comes to food: the fact that fish tastes great with lemon, or that theres nothing more moreish than a combination of salty and sweet

Basically, if you want to get more knowledgeable and comfortable around wine, food can be your gateway drug.

What this book definitely isnt suggesting is that theres any such thing as a perfect pairing. Wine and food are quite literally a matter of taste, which means that everyones palate is different there are endless numbers of brilliant combinations out there, and half the fun comes from experimenting and learning what you like. This book is just a collection of the pairings that have brought us the most joy, so they can become delicious shortcuts for you.

None of this is to say that youre doing anything wrong if you pick up a quick bottle of a reliable favourite without thinking, or drink whatever you can find in the house because you havent been to the shops. Sometimes you have the time and the headspace to think about what youre drinking with your food, and sometimes you dont. And that is totally fine.

But when you are in the mood to choose a wine that will make a meal something to really savour, this book will be your guide.

You can use this purely as a reference book: look up what youre eating, note the wines that go with it best, and head to the shops. Or you can dip in and out at leisure, without any particular food in mind. As you read, youll absorb lots of useful information about the world of wine, almost without realising it, and in a way that you can easily remember and apply next time youre picking up a bottle.

Upfront is a quick guide to some of the basic terminology that it really is worth having at your fingertips as you find your way around wine, plus a bit of jargon-busting. The pairings are grouped into six sections, arranged by different food and meal types. All the foods are also indexed at the back for speedy reference, too.

At the end of each of these sections are at-a-glance guides covering the main ways to serve some of the most popular meals out there different takes on pasta, pizza and roast dinners, to name a few.

For other dishes, there are specific, more detailed pairings, which tell you more about one particular wine that works well, and why as well as giving more general suggestions, under the heading, If you cant find this, go for

If you want a really broad, top-line way to describe what you need, perhaps by asking a member of staff in the shop or glancing over a few labels, youll find that under the heading If all else fails, ask for

This book is for when youre drinking at home, but what about ordering wine in restaurants? Thats a very different situation, which is why weve kept the focus here to times when you have the chance to go shopping for wine yourself.

For one thing, unless youre at a restaurant with a ten-tonne, 300-page list, youll have far fewer wines to choose from in a restaurant than in a decent-sized shop. More importantly, though, youll have people there who can help and advise you.

All the same, because we hope this book will give you a thirst for making more informed and interesting choices in restaurants too, turn to for tips on how to make the most of a restaurant wine list.

Most of us arent used to talking in detail about how things taste or smell: were far more at ease with describing how things look, for instance. Thats one of the reasons why when people talk and write about wine it can feel like theyre speaking a totally different language. (To be fair, quite a lot of the words used do actually derive from other languages.)

Thats one of the reasons, but another is the fact that there are too many people in the world of wine who like to show off and demonstrate their superiority by using words that mark them out as someone who knows their stuff but which normal people wouldnt understand.

So here are some of the most common wine words, as well as what they mean and how theyre used, so you can know your stuff, too. Some are genuinely useful and will help you get your hands on the wine you want. Some will just help you see through the bullshit.