Find a fungi for that bunny

Rabbit, brown trout or venison pair beautifully with four of our tasty native mushrooms; John Wright simply has to pick the perfect wine

- John Wright

Of the 7,000 or so larger — as in, not microscopic — fungi found in Britain, my educated guess is that about 500 are edible, 500 have varying degrees of toxicity and the rest are too small, too tough, too bitter, or too slimy to bother with.

Only about 150 of the edible ones have any gastronomic merit and of those perhaps 30 you would be prepared to pay for in a restaurant. Even then there is a hierarchy of excellence and the four I have chosen are true top-table species.

For those who wish to forage wild mushrooms, it is worth noting that only two dozen of the 500 poisonous species are deadly. This sounds encouraging, but very few of the thousand or so fungus forays I have enjoyed over the years have failed to find something that would have had me in intensive care if I’d eaten them. I see death caps a couple of times every year and I find the brown roll rim, which can catastrophically destroy all your red blood cells, in every autumn woodland I visit.

Wine pairing with the understated flavours of most mushrooms is a minority pursuit. I was prepared to have a stab at it and had a tentative list, but I found myself wandering without purpose around London when I encountered the discreet yet dauntingly impressive premises of Berry Bros & Rudd of Pall Mall.