Wine tips for asparagus season

There are few more delicious heralds of the arrival of spring than a plate of new season asparagus. Simply steamed, with a nob of butter and just a sprinkle of sea-salt crunch for contrast, the spears seem to contain the very essence of this time of year, a barely contained, sap-rising, spirit-lifting burst of green energy and flavour.  To make the spring scene truly complete, the asparagus should be served on a garden table on a sunny lunchtime with the air thick with blossomy fragrance, and with the very necessary accompaniment of a river-cool glass of dry white wine. This despite the fact that asparagus has a bad reputation as a wine-killer, since those intense green characteristics can have a funny effect on the flavour of many wines, a reaction that supresses the wine’s flavours and brings about a kind of lurking artificial-tasting sweetness that isn’t anyone’s idea of fun.

There are ways and wines of getting round this though. One approach is to do a sort of like-with-like, which usually means pairing up the asparagus with a wine that shares its uninhibited herbaceousness. Sauvignon blanc is the most obvious of these, but so too English bacchus, Spanish verdejo, some Austrian grüner veltliner or the often-pungent dry white bargains of southwest France’s IGP Côtes de Gascogne.

There’s a case to be made that this combination is almost too much, with the clash of greens dialled right the way up to 11. But I rather like the sheer flavoury intensity of pitting super-fresh asparagus against the grassy tones, gooseberry, guava and elderflower of a classic Marlborough sauvignon such as Te Pa Signature Series Sauvignon Blanc 2025 (£11.50, or 9.75 with a Clubcard until 20 April, Tesco) or the cooler but no less vibrant, nettly verdancy of M&S Lyme Bay Bacchus 2024 (£16.50), a well-made blend from a Dorset-based producer that also includes grapes from Essex and Kent in the mix.

Other wines work better if you’re having asparagus as an accompaniment or ingredient, as opposed to the sole main event. If the asparagus is added into scrambled eggs, an omelette, or a risotto, say, or if you’re adding some creamy white cheese (goat, sheep or cow) to make an asparagus salad, a richer, softer, more rounded white will work better, although my choice would be to go for one which has some creaminess and savoury tones but still retains some grassy vim: an oaked sauvignon-semillon blend from Bordeaux such as the very smart, grapefruit zesty and subtly grassy-herbal G de Guiraud 2023 (£24, The Great Wine Co), for example.

Asparagus comes in many forms, though. There is immense joy to be had by pairing the nuttier, rootier flavours of the slender, sharper, tougher wild asparagus you find across the Mediterranean with a subtly herbal crisp sparkling wine from Catalonia, such as he always excellent Juve y Camps Reserva de la Familia (£20.90, Fortnum & Mason). The more subtle flavours of white asparagus, meanwhile, are an altogether easier, more accommodating companion for a range of dry white wines, although my choices tend to reflect the places where I’ve had the most memorable experiences of this decidedly less assertive delicacy.

It might be a zesty but peach-fleshy, spring-floral albariño, such as Waitrose No. 1 La Val Albariño, Rías Baixas, Spain 2024 (£12, down from £14 until 28 April, Waitrose), to remind me of a happy picnic of silky white asparagus out of a jar on holiday in Galicia a few years back. Or it might be a wine to take me back to Alsace, where white asparagus is a speciality and is served with something like Domaine Frédéric Mochel Muscat d’Alsace 2024 (£18, The Wine Society), a gloriously juicy fragrant, musky white which even on its own tastes like late-spring in a glass.