Booze for korma chameleons

Indian food provides drinkers and restaurateurs alike with a challenge. What's the ideal match for korma, tikka and vindaloo?

For cultural fidelity, it would be hard to beat lassi or coconut water. Most British diners, though, like to get at least tiddly when they go out for a meal - and most èmigrè restaurant owners enjoy the profit and convenience of serving alcohol. So: wine or beer?

Both, of course. I happen to think beer is best, but many drinkers prefer wine. Carlsberg or Heineken, typically, on draught, plus bottles of Cobra or Kingfisher and a dozen or so wines from the nearest cash-and-carry - a dismal selection of this sort, typical of most local Bangladeshi restaurants, lets the food down badly. By taking just a little interest in the drinks they serve, Indian restaurateurs could fertilise their reputation.

Let's start with beer. Why no beer list? Never have so many great bottled beers been available in this country, as a quick glance around our supermarkets would confirm; listing 15 or so would be easy. Whenever I cook Indian food at home, I always choose great beer rather than ordinary wine to go with it.

So-called Indian lagers like Kingfisher (4.8 per cent, brewed by Shepherd Neame in Faversham, around £1.89 for 660ml) or Cobra (5 per cent, brewed by Charles Wells in Bedford, around £1.99 for 660ml) are a timid choice. Kingfisher is hoppier and cleaner (10/20); Cobra is maltier and smoother (11/20) - but a far better lager than either is the cleansing and complex Czech Pilsner Urquell (17/20, 4.4 per cent, around £1.99 for 660ml), brilliant with creamy korma curries.

Three other great beers with Indian food are the rejuvenated Worthington White Shield (16/20, 5.6 per cent, around £1.79 for 500ml), its faint coal-dust flavours perfect with tandoori-style tikka dishes; Black Sheep Ale (18/20, 4.4 per cent, around £1.65 for 500ml), an extraordinarily complex, pungent beer ideal with a thick Madras-style curry; and Brakspear's, light and quenching yet flavourful (16/20, 2.5 per cent, around £1.19 for 500ml), for those wedded to vindaloo machismo.

What about wine? Chilli, contrary to popular belief, does not annihilate other flavours; it merely frames them anew within a circle of fire on your tongue. Prove this to yourself by seasoning a fillet steak with chilli instead of black pepper. You'll find the actual flavour of your favourite or usual wine partner unaltered; it's just joined by a physical glow.

What does, by contrast, throw out a challenge to wine is the stupendous oiliness of much Indian cooking combined with the sedimentary accretion of different spices and seeds, and the altogether more disconcerting presence of fresh ginger. Unoaked white wines of gentle flavour (white CÙtes du Rhòne, frascati or verdicchio from the old world; Australian verdelho or South African chenin blanc from the new) can be good, as can Alsace Gewurztraminer if you want a more baroque combination (better with korma than vindaloo).

Among reds, go for the light and fresh: a great Beaujolais or a Loire valley red like Chinon or Bourgueil are exceptionally well adapted to Indian food, which equates in New World terms with wines like Argentinian bonarda or tempranillo, or pinot noir from New Zealand. As always, though, the best wines need careful sourcing. Local discount cash-and-carry bad; nearest Oddbins good.

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