Excess all areas

This modest collection of bottles should give you some idea of a regular working day (if there is such a thing) chez Hughes.

Some time late last year I hatched a plan with one of my colleagues, The Guardian's Victoria Moore, to spend a day finding the right kinds of food to match with German Riesling. Now Riesling is one of those grapes that wine buffs love but most people are uncertain about. Part of this unpopularity is due to the fact that people think all German wine is Liebraumilch, Piesporter, Blue Nun, Black Tower or generic Hock. Even if they don't bundle Riesling in with these wines (which often have little to do with the grape in any case), people think the wines are too sweet (in fact a good German wine, even though it might have some residual – ie unfermented – sugar in it, balances this sugar with crisp acidity) or, if they're not sweet, they're so acidic and mineral that they come across as being austere and unfriendly.

Anyway, Victoria's column is all about finding good food matches for good wines – and I write an occasional food and wine-matching column for www.wine-pages.com – so we decided to call in some wines and spend a day tasting them with different dishes (I know: it's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it).

The day kicked off at 11.30 with a tasting of 26 Rieslings. Once we'd worked our way through them all, rejecting the ones we didn't think were up to scratch for one reason or another, we began working on finding wines that matched some of the dishes I'd prepared. We started with quail marinated in ras-el-hanout (see 'Jen, Coz, Leo and some wonderful wines' for more info), then moved on to slices of smoked goose breast served with caramelised apple slices, a Keralan prawn and coconut curry I plan on adapting for dieters (watch this space for a full recipe some time soon), grilled lemon sole and a mushroom risotto.

Not exactly ideal diet fare, although I made sure I took small portions and swallowed very little of the wine I tasted. The conclusions of the day's experiment should be up on the Wine Pages site in the next few weeks – and you'll probably find Victoria's take in the pages of the Guardian's Saturday magazine within the next fortnight.