Red wine versus white wine in a sauce - what's the difference?

[Bodenbabe]

I did a very nice sauce for a lamb casserole (tomato, onion, garlic, rosemary etc.) and it had white wine in. If I were to use red wine instead, what sort of difference woudl this make? I must say, I was surprised that the recipe called for white wine, as I'd have thought red more suitable for those kind of ingredients - but I only have red wine i nthe house and am wondering if it's likely to be that different to the white?

The sauce would be darker, though it's red anyway from the tomatoes. Slightly different flavour with red, but it will still be lovely!

There is a greek lamb stew recipe in Nigella's How To Cook that calls for a whole bottle of white wine - tis very yum.

Red wine with red meat and white wine with white meat.

Marne, that's what I thought too but this was amazing with white.

LowLevel, I have that book so will check it out now - many thanks!

Not necessarily Marne. Coq au vin is an example of chicken dish traditionally made with red wine.

Classic bolognese actually calls for white, so that's not a hard and fast rule. There's less chance of overwhelming the flavour using a white. Don't substitute when doing a bourguignon, but for anything else I haven't found it to make much difference.