What to pair with salads

When all you want for dinner is a what's-in-the-fridge salad, matching wines with it can be surprisingly challenging – we come to the rescue with some essential pointers...

- VICTORIA MOORE

Salad is often thought of as being tricky with wine. And yes, it's true that adding a large, pungent helping of green salad with a vinegary dressing to your plate might disrupt (or even kill) a fragile, old Pomerol or a velvety Priorat. Vinegary dressings prefer to spar with young wines that have more tannic or acidic fight. So a better pick - if you want a red in your glass because you're eating a well-dressed green salad with, say, rib of beef or roast duck - might be an edgy Chianti Classico, northern Rhône Syrah or youngish Médoc from a classical vintage.

But the real issue when it comes to any discussion of pairing wine with salad is the range and breadth of what is covered by the word 'salad', never mind what else might be with it on the plate. Where do you start? Where do you stop? I'll begin with a classic that is often eaten as a meal in itself, especially in summer: