The roast potatoes have worked.

This is already an achievement and should be celebrated.

The meat is resting, somebody is making gravy and then comes the question capable of bringing an otherwise competent kitchen to a halt.

What wine are we opening?

There's a bottle somebody brought at Christmas.

There's another with a château on the label, which feels promising.

And there's one at the back that nobody remembers buying.

At this point somebody normally says:

“Red goes with meat, doesn't it?”

Sort of.

We decided Peterborough deserved a slightly better answer.

Meet Olivier - our Frenchman for awkward wine questions

Olivier is the founder of 51 Wines and, rather conveniently for us, he's French.

More importantly, he knows his wine.

He sources from French producers, tastes the wines he works with and spends a fair amount of his life matching bottles with the food people are actually going to eat.

So we're giving him a recurring Taste Trail challenge:

make wine easier.

No expectation that you can identify blackcurrant, cedar and the faint aroma of a French hillside after rain.

No examination afterwards.

Just tell us what you're eating and we'll ask Olivier what he'd put beside it.

First assignment: Sunday roast.

Beef: you can stop pretending you understand the label

Beef is the Sunday roast that makes people feel they ought to open something impressive.

Olivier's starting point is simpler.

You want a red with enough body and structure to cope with beef and gravy, but that doesn't mean spending a fortune.

A Bordeaux is an obvious French direction.

One example from Olivier's own range is Château Malbat, a Bordeaux Supérieur currently around £12. It's predominantly Merlot with Cabernet Sauvignon.

But the lesson isn't “buy Château Malbat.”

It's this:

If you're standing in front of a wine shelf looking for something to accompany roast beef, a Merlot-led Bordeaux is a very reasonable place to start.

That's considerably more helpful the next time you're in a supermarket, restaurant or wine shop and Olivier isn't standing beside you.

Lamb can take something with a bit more attitude

Lamb, rosemary and proper gravy aren't exactly delicate.

So the wine doesn't need to tiptoe around them.

Olivier points us towards a more structured Bordeaux-style red something with enough fruit, acidity and a little spice to stand alongside the lamb rather than disappear underneath it.

His own example would be Château La Rose Sarron from Graves.

Again, you don't need that particular bottle.

What you're remembering is:

roast lamb + rosemary = don't be frightened of a red with a little more character.

That's our level of wine education.

Nobody is taking notes.

Chicken is where the Sunday-lunch rulebook can go in the bin

Now things become more interesting.

Because apparently we've been unnecessarily bossy about chicken.

Fancy red?

Fine.

A softer Merlot can work beautifully.

Fancy white?

Also fine.

A fresh white with enough flavour to handle the herbs, roast potatoes and everything else on the plate can work too.

Olivier's red example is an approachable southern-French Merlot. For white, he'd look towards something such as a Sauvignon Blanc/Sémillon blend.

Which gives us perhaps the most important wine lesson of the afternoon:

You are allowed to drink the colour you actually like.

France has been informed.

It will cope.

What about the gravy?

This was the question we really wanted answered.

Because wine advice has an irritating habit of discussing roast beef as though we're eating a naked slice of meat from an otherwise empty plate.

We're not.

There's gravy.

Yorkshire pudding.

Roast potatoes.

Carrots.

Possibly cauliflower cheese if somebody has decided Sunday afternoon needs additional jeopardy.

That's why Olivier thinks about the whole plate, not merely the meat.

A rich sauce can change what works. Herbs matter. Something creamy matters. Even the way something is cooked can push the wine in another direction.

And suddenly wine matching starts making rather more sense.

And then somebody produces cheese

This is where Sunday lunch becomes Sunday evening.

Nobody was going to have cheese.

Then cheese appeared.

Olivier's advice here is another reason not to obsess over buying a completely different bottle for every course.

A red that worked with the roast may carry happily into harder, mature cheeses afterwards.

Which is excellent news because opening four different bottles for Sunday lunch would make this article considerably less responsible.

The Olivier test

So here's what we're going to do with our new French wine expert.

We're going to give him real food situations, rather than asking him to recommend “a nice wine”.

Steak and chips.

Fish and chips.

Cheese boards.

Indian food.

Barbecues.

Date-night dinner.

Christmas turkey.

The £10 bottle versus the £25 bottle.

And perhaps the ultimate Peterborough challenge:

what on earth should you drink with a takeaway?

Sometimes Olivier's answer might be something he sells.

Sometimes it won't be.

That's rather the point.

We want to understand why something works, so the next time we're confronted by 200 bottles we have slightly more idea what we're doing.

For now, though, Sunday lunch is sorted.

Beef: start around a Merlot-led Bordeaux.

Lamb: don't be afraid of something with more structure and character.

Chicken: red or white choose the direction you actually enjoy.

Everything else on the plate: don't forget it's there.

And if someone at the table starts discussing tannins at excessive length?

Give them responsibility for washing up.

Ask Olivier

Got a food-and-wine combination you'd like Olivier to solve next?

Tell us what you're eating from steak to fish and chips and we'll put the best questions to him in a future Taste Trail.