Slow-cooked beef cheek and Cotes du Rhone

There’s so much inexpensive Côtes du Rhône about that it’s easy to forget that it can be a sufficiently substantial wine to take on a richly flavoured dish, especially if it comes from a named village and a good vintage.

The dish, which we had at Clarette in Marylebone, was a main course of slow cooked beef cheek with a luxuriant olive oil-based mash, onion and bone marrow - the charred onion really adding to the success of the pairing.

And the wine? The powerful Domaine des Maravilhas, Maestral Rouge 2015, Côtes du Rhône Villages Laudun (a classic blend of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre) which comes from a biodynamically run estate. It doesn't retail in the UK but obviously a similar style of Côtes du Rhône would work equally well.

I ate at Clarette as a guest of Inter Rhône

Cider-battered onions with fino sherry

To kick off National Vegetarian Week and a week of veggie pairings (don’t groan, carnivores, we’ll be back on meat next week!) here’s a great pairing from Friday night’s underground supper club, Montpelier Basement in Bristol.

You might think cider would be the perfect match with cider-battered onions and of course it would, not least because you’d have an open bottle to hand, but chilled fino sherry - in this case Tio Pepe - is also the biz.

Fino sherry is normally associated with ingredients such as olives, nuts, Spanish ham and cheese but it’s also great with anything fried including croquetas, fritters and goujons.

I particularly liked this simple idea of serving onions in strips like churros. A really unusual and imaginative tapa.

Stichelton and onion quiche and Fleurie

A simple lunch of quiche from leftovers thrown together from the fridge turned into a feast with a glass of Claire and Fabien Chasselay's Fleurie La Chapelle des Bois, an organic Beaujolais from the excellent 2009 vintage.

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking Stilton or Stichelton (the unpasteurised version I used) is so strong that it needs a sweet wine or a fortified wine like port, but in a creamy quiche, offset by onions, it will easily work with a crisp white wine or a light red like this. You also always need to take any accompanying salad into account - ours was a simple green one with a classic vinaigrette which also pointed to a wine with some acidity. This delightfully fresh and fruity Beaujolais, which you can buy for £13.25 from Vintage Roots, hit the spot just perfectly.

It seems to me there's a bit of a Beaujolais revival at the moment - I'm sure I've seen more about Beaujolais Nouveau this year than I have for a long while. And it's still huge in Paris, even among the natural wine movement, as this evocative post from Bertrand Celce of Wine Terroirs testifies. But with the 2009 vintage still around and some charming 2010s I'd stick to the real McCoy.

Butternut squash and barrel-fermented Chardonnay

Even if you're not a fan of the blockbuster style of Chardonnay still favoured by many producers you have to admit it meets its match in butternut squash. Why? Because the rich sweetness of the squash kicks the sometimes over-exuberant tropical fruit and vanilla-scented oak into touch and magically transforms them into an elegant, refreshing glassful.

Chardonnay also pairs well with the ingredients that complement squash - roasted red peppers, caramelised onions, grilled or roasted corn, wild or dried mushrooms like chanterelles, parmesan and cream all blend in blissfully.

Butternut squash risotto is a great match for a big muscular Chard, as is a butternut squash or pumpkin soup. Great autumn and winter drinking.

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