Click here to use our interactive food and wine matching tool.

Now we know that wine and food appreciation is a matter of personal taste. If we all liked the same thing there would be no need for all the thousands of wines and countless dishes that the world has to offer. But it's true that some kinds of food and wine just seem made for each other, whilst others can be a culinary car crash!

So how do you find those ideal combinations?

The easiest way is to use the menu-matching tool on this site.

Simply punch in what you are eating for each course and the menu-matcher will give you a selection of wines that should work really well with the food you have chosen. And each of our wines has suggested foods and occasions in the main wine shop area.

There are also a few general principles that usually hold true:

This is often more important than what kind of meat, fish or vegetable we are talking about. If a dish is robustly cooked - ie with a high flame, then it will acquire stronger flavours and need a fuller flavoured wine.

Many dishes have a signature flavour, often down to one or a few ingredients. Things like chilli, garlic, herbs, tomato, and cream all shape the character of a dish, and these are what you need to match the wine to. Keep it simple - fresh flavours require fresh flavoured wines , red or white. Richer flavours require richer wines. Spices and salt really don’t work with oaky flavours, so avoid oaked wines.

If a dish has lots of accompaniments then these often provide the main flavour and you should match your wine to these. Christmas lunch is the classic example. It might be Turkey but the cranberry jelly, sprouts, red cabbage and stuffing cries out for a juicy red, like Pinot Noir rather than a white.

If you want to know more about food and wine matching, check out the food matching pages.