GRAPEVINE

WHAT do you drink as you tuck into the chicken masala and onion bhajis down at your local tandoori? Lager, I'll bet, even if normally nothing but wine passes your lips. It's certainly the only place you'd ever have caught me drinking lager. Till now, that is. I've just finished tasting a score of different Indian dishes, bought in supermarkets and restaurants. I've also chomped into the individual spices, cooked and spread on plain pasta, with a vast array of wines and beers. And I've kicked lager for good. It's a myth that wine doesn't go with Indian food - it's just a question of choosing the right one.

We all assume that the "heat" - chilli - will be a wine-killer. Not so. Some foods really change the taste of wines. Sweet foods make dry wines taste flat and dull, creamy foods make red wines taste tough and tannic, while some flavours simply clash.

But though chilli peppers may set your tongue on fire, they do not affect the taste of wine. (Test this on a simpler, Western dish such as chilli con carne: the wine still tastes the same, and good.) American food scientists have shown that some tongues are very insensitive to chilli, while others - like mine - glow unbearably at the mere thought. If your tongue is of the more delicate kind, you may feel that the "heat" distracts you from the subtleties of a finer wine, and prefer to choose something cheaper. But the right wine will still taste good.

As for the spices, many are very wine-friendly indeed. Cardamom tastes wonderful with Chardonnay, and very good with Viognier or Sauvignon Blanc. Coriander is yummy with a German Mller Thurgau (such as Baden Dry) or Silvaner, cumin is wonderful with Frascati or Viognier, ginger with Italian Pinot Grigio, Viognier, Gewurztraminer or Sauvignon Blanc. And Indian blends of spices also generally chime in with a wide selection of wines, especially whites.

It's not at all because of the spices that choosing the right wine to blend in perfectly with an Indian meal is a far harder job than matching Western food. Westerners conveniently eat one dish at a time, and you can select a wine with just the right flavour, acidity, sweetness and fruitiness to suit. An Indian table is spread with an array of different dishes, all to be eaten at the same time, and the chosen wine (or beer or lager) needs to bridge the lot.

White wines stand the best chance of going pleasantly to brilliantly with a whole range of dishes. Reds are trickier, because the tannin of many reds clashes with some herbs and spices, and with the yoghurt and/or cream so often used in India in marinades or sauces. It makes many reds taste more tannic, more astringently bitter than they really are. It's probably best to avoid reds altogether with certain cooking styles, such as hot, thick Madras sauces or very creamy, yoghurty, almondy dishes.

But a limited clutch of wines goes well across quite a wide spectrum: try not-too-tannic Loire reds, such as Chinon, Saumur Champigny or St- Nicholas de Bourgeuil, Franciacorta or inexpensive Sangiovese from Italy, light, inexpensive Shiraz, light, young red Rioja and young Tempranillo wines from Spain, or Pinot Noir.

It's for a similar reason that beer or lager is not ideal (though by no means horrid) - the bitterness of the hops in no way matches the food, and indeed the food sometimes emphasises the bitterness. Some lagers taste too "fruity", and the fizz also heightens the prickly heat of the chilli on sensitive tongues. Fizzy water does the same - far from quenching the burn as you might have expected.

White wine doesn't have the bitterness problem; whatever the dish, I usually found a reasonable range of whites that went quite well to brilliantly. (Chutneys and pickles, however, are wine-killers, whatever the wine.) As with reds, a certain clutch of whites scored again and again. So with my next tableful of Indian dishes (or my solo pork vindaloo at home) I shall go for Vin de Pays des Ctes de Gascogne, Viognier or New World Sauvignon Blancs - and Baden Dry if there's a lot of fresh coriander about.

If they aren't on the menu, I shall stick to fizz-free water or, in true Indian style, to that really fire-quenching yoghurt drink, lassi.