White wine with steak? Yes, it works very well!

We usually have a few ends of bottles knocking about on the side table in the dining room or in the fridge, a totally random selection as a rule. Last week I went out mushrooming and returned with a modest collection of ceps — or penny buns as they used to be called in Ireland — and decided to make a wild mushroom risotto.

It was good, full of autumnal flavours and, of course, butter and Parmesan. We tried a mouthful of two or three reds with it but none really worked. A Fitou, tasty in other contexts, actively worked against it. And then I poured some Verdicchio and it worked like a dream.

This set me thinking controversial thoughts. Are white wines, I wondered, more versatile than reds? Are there, indeed, more variations on the white theme? Are we conditioned to relegate white wines to seafood and starters while the main act must always be accompanied by the reassuring presence of a solid, ideally dark, red wine?

I then discovered that I’m not alone in thinking like this. And I recalled a few experiences I’ve had over the years. In Salta in the far North of Argentina I tucked into the beefiest empanadas you can imagine. Think Cornish pasties with an Argentinian attitude: dense meat encased in lard-rich pastry. The wine? Not a beefy Malbec. I was served a chilled Torrontes: spicy, exotic on the nose, soft and mild on the palate. It worked brilliantly.

I once had a glass of a lovely Western Australian Chardonnay before we tucked into a tagliata of steak: thinly sliced, spread on a salad of rocket with cherry tomatoes, topped with shaved Parmesan and a drizzle of exceptional balsamic vinegar. There was a Valpolicella Ripasso to go with it but, my goodness, the end of my glass of Chardonnay was an even better partner! White wine with steak? Yes, throw off the straitjacket of conventional winethink!

Godello is very much the smart, inside track Spanish white wine grape these days, described by some as the thinking person’s Albariño (which is rather unfair, as they are quite different in some respects). I associate it with seafood and, indeed, found a sublime multicultural match between it and crab with homemade linguini during the summer. But yes, it’s spot on too with lamb rogan josh which came as something of a surprise.