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At a recent tasting, I got chatting to a winemaker from Australia’s Clare Valley as I bravely made my way through his wares: a ripe, leathery shiraz and a deep, dark cabernet sauvignon that put me in mind of blackcurrant bushes. These were serious wines – and good value, too. A generation ago, such gutsy New World reds were all the rage, but now, lamented the winemaker, gen Z was more interested in lighter, cooler-climate wines, lower on the alcohol and brighter on the palate.

He had two theories on this. One was vanity: no one on Instagram or TikTok wants to drink a red wine that stains their teeth, which is bad news for producers of high-tannin wines such as malbec and cabernet. And, two: it’s also to do with the changing western diet. Aussie shiraz is the archetypal sausage-on-the-barbie wine; Argentinian malbec is a steakhouse cliché; and, in France, malbec is mainly grown around Cahors in the south-west, land of heavy cassoulets and fat-tastic maigrets de canard. You need something with a bit of muscle to stand up to all that.

So it stands to reason that as meat becomes less central to our plates, a little of the prestige may fall away from your classic, ahem, meat wines. Still, this begs the question: what to drink when vegetables are the star? Well, just as plant-centred cooking requires a little more creativity than, say, frying a steak, so, too, does matching wines. That said, you can easily overthink this stuff – after all, a floral white with a little acidity is an excellent match for green spring vegetables: think Austrian grüner veltliner and Spanish (or Portuguese) albariño, or the rarer albillo. Then again, it rather depends on how you’re cooking said veg. If you’re adding a little char, you may want some oak. If you’re pairing with cream or coconut, some sweetness and tropical fruit won’t go amiss. I’d opt for an Alsatian gewürztraminer or torrontes from the Argentine Andes for Romy Gill’s south Indian-style asparagus.

If you’re more in the mood for a red, well, aubergines, mushrooms, roots and beans are your friends – though, again, it depends on context. To my mind, there’s no finer accompaniment to a nice garlic- and tahini-drenched meze lunch than a bright young Bekaa Valley red, for example. A Spanish-style bean stew may call for a nice tempranillo or old-vine garnacha, or one of those lovely rustic south-western French wines, like the braucol in today’s pick. Likewise, if you’re making a strong hard cheese the star (see Simon Rogan’s recipes, you can pull out something with a little more oomph. A nice New World cabernet, perhaps? Wine is, after all, a vegetable of sorts.

Four great wines for vegetables

Kew Gardens Albillo 2024 £16.99 Laithwaites, 12.3%. A spring salad of a wine: peachy-fresh, with excellent body.

Tesco Finest Torrontes £9 Tesco, 12.5%. Pineapple-scented, high-altitude Argentine grape that’s great with southern Indian food.

Waitrose Loved & Found Braucol £9.25 Waitrose Cellar, 12.5%. A friend to beans, and pretty much everything else.

Château Musar Jeune Red 2022 £16.90 VINVM, 14%. Demands an alfresco meze lunch.