I've been having a lot of fun over the past few months with Niki Segnit's The Flavour Thesaurus, a Christmas present that has quickly become my current favourite cookbook, mainly because it's barely a cookbook at all, just an ingenious series of ideas and vignettes about which foods go with which. It's useful if, like me, you tend to start with the ingredients and look for a recipe rather than the other way round. It tells you things like how to jazz up a glut of parsnips (tarragon is one of Segnit's inspired suggestions that I hadn't come across before), and reminds you why a classic pairing such as chilli and chocolate works so well.

One of the many happy side effects of cooking with Segnit has been to rekindle this lapsed vegetarian's appreciation of the humble vegetable. Since falling off the wagon a few years back, I'd slipped into the classic British meat-and-two veg way of thinking. That has spilled into the wines I choose: if I was having fish, I'd look for a crisp dry white, white meat meant richer whites or light reds, and red meat meant gutsier reds. The sauce or style of cooking would lead to variations on those themes, but basically the slab of protein was the star, just as it is in the food-matching advice you see on most wine back labels.

Segnit knows her onions and has reminded me that in many cases those supporting players can of course be the lead. And on those occasions where I'm in the mood to take the wine pairing very seriously it's the vegetable dishes that require the most creative thought.

Those back labels aren't much help in this search for the most part. Saying a wine goes with "vegetable dishes", as many do, is no more useful than saying it goes with food. There's a world of difference between, say, the massive umami hit of one of my favourite comfort foods, a miso, Marmite and puy lentil vegetarian shepherd's pie, and the delicate crunch of a green salad. It's no surprise that the wines that work best with them (a salty, richly savoury dry amontillado sherry for the pie; a crisp dry white with a herbal twist such as vermentino or grüner veltliner for the salad) are about as different as two wines get.

As with all food and wine matching, the trick with vegetable dishes is to seek out the dominant ingredient and find wines that either complement its flavours and textures in like-with-like fashion or provide a contrast that cuts against it. You can see how that works with a classic Kiwi sauvignon blanc, which has a snappy, pungent, faintly sweaty greenness to match the same character in asparagus, but also has an incisive citric crispness to cut through the almost buttery richness of avocado.

The other thing to consider is how you're cooking the vegetables. Generally speaking, the less intense or transformative the procedure, the lighter the wine. So crisp light whites or rosés would be my choice with anything raw, boiled or steamed. A light red such as beaujolais or generic côtes du Rhône or a richer off-dry white such as a pinot gris from Alsace or New Zealand works better with the deeper, sweeter flavours that come from a tray of caramelised roast vegetables, while the meaty, earthy characters of slow-cooked vegetable stews with pulses are happiest with the same kind of robust reds (Aussie shiraz, Argentine malbec) you'd have with red meat. Spice, too, plays its part: dishes with chilli and pepper heat generally work best with wines that have a little sweetness: Alsace again, or deep-coloured off-dry New World rosés.

But the best food matches tend to follow the principle of what grows together goes together. Two of the most memorable meals of my life have involved local vegetables served in situ with local wines: the remarkable six-course tomato menu at Christian Etienne's restaurant in Avignon with a bottle of the robust, nearly-red rosé from nearby Tavel, and the simple truffle and wild mushroom risotto I had at a friend's in Piedmont accompanied by a fragrant, truffly old barolo by Cavallotto in high truffle season. If I ever got round to writing one, both would have prominent entries in my personal flavour thesaurus.

Six wines to serve with vegetable dishes

Tapada de Villar Vinho Verde, Portugal 2012 (£6.99, Marks & Spencer)
A crackling, gently lemon-sherbet spritzy white with a gentle tropical fruit character that is light enough on its feet and in alcohol to serve with summery vegetable dishes such as green salad or chilled pea and mint soup.

The Ned Waihopai River Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, New Zealand (£9.99, Waitrose; Majestic)
There's all the pungent verdant grass-and-gooseberry of classic Kiwi sauvignon here to match with asparagus, plus the generosity of fruit and limey acidity that will work just as well with a mildly spicy and herby Vietnamese or Thai stir-fry.

Château Minuty M de Minuty Rosé, Côtes de Provence, France (£9.95, Roberson Wine; £12.99, or £9.99 if you buy two bottles, Majestic)
Delicate but zesty pale Provençal pinks, of which this is a top-flight example, are talented food-matching all-rounders, whether with a plate of tomatoes dressed with olive oil, or a niçoise style salad (with or without the fishy components).

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Trimbach Pinot Gris Réserve, Alsace, France (from £14.99, Tesco.com; Great Western Wines; winedirect.co.uk)
Though they are the same grape variety, Alsace makes its pinot gris in a plumper style than Italy makes its pinot grigio. Trimbach adds a little steel to the quince jelly and exotic spice, for a wine that works with Asian spice and Alsatian onion tart.

Anna Martens Vino di Anna Etna Rosso Jeudi 15, Sicily, Italy 2012 (£15.54, winebear.com; Les Caves de Pyrene)
Like all Italian wines, this limpid and fluent light red from the slopes of Etna is built with plenty of acidity to cope with food, and there's a red-berry-and-herbs flavour here too that has a kinship with pasta with tomatoes either in a sauce or al crudo.

GB Burlotto Barolo Monvigliero, Piedmont, Italy 2008 (£28, The Wine Society)
This has the classic barolo paradox of power (14.5% alcohol) and ethereal fragrance (rose floral and subtle earthiness), but there's a ripeness and generosity of fruit here that you don't always find in nebbiolo at this age: a treat for wild mushroom risotto or pulse-based stews.