Summer food & drink

Strong on flavour

Wild mushrooms and herbs seem to demand a red wine made from the nebbiolo grape from north-west Italy, and the gnocchi also point us towards the top of the Apennine peninsula. But that won't fit the brief, so as an alternative look for a pinot noir whose earthiness will pick up on similar elements in the mushrooms. Chapel Down Pinot Noir 2003 (around £12.99, Fortnum & Mason, Selfridges) is made from grapes that usually go into the winery's sparkling wine. It bristles with character, so you need to eat with it, but its leathery grip and gentle, berry scents sit well with the fungal, rosemary fragrance of the food.

The sturdy sausages deserve a decent beer, especially as the gravy is made with British ale, so over to beer evangelist Rupert Ponsonby, who says, 'Good, creamy sausages with thyme/parsley/basil flavours need a soft, gentle, slightly sweet beer, so I'd go for a mild or an ale that hides its hop under a cloak of sweet barley malt.' Old-fashioned beers such as Harveys Cask Bitter (of Lewes) or a honey beer such as Fuller's Organic Honeydew (£1.75, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Asda), in other words.

As for the black pudding, I'd usually go for a red wine as simple and rustic as the meat - a Corbière, a straightforward Côtes du Rhône, a Marcillac, St Chinian or Cahors -though one of the best black pudding matches I've tasted was a red made with port grapes from the Douro in Portugal. It was deep purple, a little bit too young and violently tannic, and it bucked like a bronco against the meat in a very pleasing way. But with vegetarian black pudding? I'd stick with the pinot noir, with its earthiness and tinge of tannin.

So you can eat the gnocchi as a starter, move on to the black pud and keep the same wine.

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