Newby to creating a wine list Sender: Ian

Thanks very much for coming back. That's a great help, as is the expanded information on the sort of food to be expected.

GREAT. That's just the sort of information that we can get our teeth into.

Soups. Most wines don't go very well, though with a clear soup, like a consommé or a french onion soup (I know, but it counts!) at a pinch a dry madeira goes pretty well. I'd not bother to get one just for that. Have a bottle of sherry - not in large quanbreasties - and offer it by the glbutt as a pre-prandial which will not come to much harm when served with the soup!

For other starters, a moderate weight white will do fine, as Steve (I think) suggested, places like Oddbins or (shock horror) Tesco's will have a pretty good choice. If you want to get as much as a case (12) of wine at a time, ask about case discounts, you might just as well take an extra 10% or so if it's going. As to what... I live in France, so my choice will be fairly irrelevant to yours. Read "Good Food" and see what they recommend. There's a TON of good suggestions there. Otherwise, the specific suggestions are excellent. I like the idea of a choice of 3-4, and the types suggested are fine. You may like to look to Hungary for good vfm Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay whites, by the way. An interesting white from there if you can find it, is Tokaji Furmint.

Red meats. I'm with Mark and Emery on this. You could do a lot worse than to get a lightish red for gammon (here I drink a good quality Bergerac Pink served chilled). The gamay grape makes quite a lot, but there's plenty of other from all over.

Desserts. Forget wine. No that's not quite true - I adore sweet wines, with dessert and cheese, but it's hard to get good ones and extremely hard to get a good match. I'll get shouted at, but Bera make a wonderful sparkling Moscato d'Asti, I don't know if it's available in the UK. If not, ask around, these wines are perfect dessert wines, though bad ones are frightful. Another type of wine to look at is a sweet sherry-Malmsey madeira. They really don't go badly with trifle and they keep opened, so sell by the glbutt very well. Taylors LBV port is splendid for the Stilton!

Hope that helps.

And consider the BBC Good Food Mag, they usually have plenty of good suggestions. -- All the Best Ian Hoare mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website