There is a particular morning in the middle of August when the British countryside changes its trousers. The grouse moors open, the first birds start their journey south, and somewhere behind a green door in Mayfair a chef quietly begins sharpening knives. By September the whole thing is in full swing, and the only question left worth asking is what to put in the glass.

The Glorious Twelfth, the twelfth of August, opens the red grouse season and fires the starting gun on the entire British game calendar. Partridge follows on the first of September, pheasant on the first of October, and venison runs quietly through the whole lot. By the time the leaves turn, the kitchens that take this seriously have game somewhere on the menu: grouse at Wiltons, a venison scotch egg at the Harwood Arms, the rotating carnival of feathers and fur at the Jugged Hare. It is the most seasonal eating we have left, and it deserves a bottle chosen with the same care as the bird.

First, Forget the Rules You Half-Remember

The received wisdom goes something like this: game is big, so give it a big red. It is the kind of advice that sounds authoritative at a dinner party and falls apart the moment the food arrives. Game is not one flavour. A young roast grouse and a well-hung haunch of venison have almost nothing in common beyond the fact that neither came from a farm. Treating them the same way is how you end up drowning a delicate bird in something built for a stew.

So the honest answer to what to drink with game is another question: which game, and cooked how. Get that right and the rest is easy. Here is the map.

The Feathered and the Fine: Grouse, Partridge, Pheasant

These birds want red Burgundy, and they want it badly. The logic is simple once you taste it. Feathered game is lean, fragrant and often served pink, all perfume and iron rather than brute force, and Pinot Noir answers it note for note: red cherry, forest floor, a whisper of something wild, and the acidity to cut through the richness of the skin and the bread sauce. Grouse, the strongest of the three, can look a properly structured Burgundy in the eye. A bottle like Domaine Robert Chevillon's Nuits-Saint-Georges Vieilles Vignes, with its dark-earth depth and old-vine seriousness, is exactly the sort of thing grouse was put on this earth to be eaten with. If you have a mature Burgundy lurking at the back of the rack, something with a few years of bottle age softening its edges, grouse is the meal to open it for. The gaminess of the bird and the forest-floor savour of an older Pinot are practically the same conversation.

Partridge and pheasant are gentler creatures and reward a lighter hand. Joseph Roty's Marsannay has all the red-fruited charm of the Cote de Nuits without asking you to remortgage the house, and it flatters a plain roast partridge like candlelight. And if you are feeding a table of eight, there is no more generous gesture than a magnum of Domaine Alain Jeanniard's Bourgogne Pinot Noir, which pours like a wine that costs twice as much and empties like one that costs half.

Feeling adventurous? Two Italians do the job beautifully. Nebbiolo, in the shape of a Mirafiore Barolo, brings roses, tar and a fine mesh of tannin that loves the sweetness of bread sauce. And Graci's Etna Rosso, all high-altitude red fruit and volcanic smoke, is essentially Burgundy with a suntan. Either will make you look like you know something.

The Bigger Beasts: Venison, Hare, Wild Boar

Now, and only now, you bring the structure. Venison is dark, dense and iron-rich, usually dressed in something wintry: juniper, redcurrant, a jus reduced until it is almost black. This is where the Rhone earns its keep. Le Clos du Caillou's Chateauneuf-du-Pape Les Quartz is all warm garrigue, black fruit and sun-baked stone, the kind of red that wraps a haunch of venison in a velvet jacket and walks it home. It has the weight to keep up and the perfume to stop it becoming a slog.

If you would rather look south of the equator, Syrah's other passport works just as well. Henschke's Mount Edelstone Shiraz from the Eden Valley is old-vine, deeply savoury and built like a cathedral, and it makes short work of the darkest, bloodiest things the season can throw at it: jugged hare, a wild boar ragu, venison that has been hung until it means business.

Between them, these two bottles cover almost every plate the season will put in front of you. One perfumed and precise for the birds, one broad-shouldered and warm for the beasts. If you buy nothing else this autumn, buy these.

The Leftfield Move Your Sommelier Keeps Quiet About

Here is the one they do not print on the wine list. Dry Oloroso sherry, with game, is a revelation. Not the sweet stuff your aunt keeps by the trifle: a proper bone-dry Oloroso like Equipo Navazos' La Bota Oloroso, all walnuts, salted caramel and sea air, that meets the mushrooms, chestnuts and roasted roots of an autumn plate exactly where they live. It is extraordinary with a cold game pie, and it will quietly upstage every red on the table. Speaking of cold game pie: a glass of proper Champagne alongside it is one of the great, unfashionable pleasures of English country life, and no, we will not be taking questions.

Serve It a Touch Cool

A quick word on temperature, because it undoes more good bottles than anything else. A dining room in autumn is a warm place, and a red served at true room temperature arrives flabby and soupy, its perfume long gone by the second glass. Game reds are at their best a little cooler than you would guess: around fifteen or sixteen degrees, cellar-cool rather than fridge-cold, so twenty minutes in a cold hall or ten in the door of the fridge does exactly the right thing. The young Rhone will thank you for an hour in a decanter, which lets the garrigue and black fruit stretch out and wake up. The Burgundy needs less coaxing; open it, pour it, and let the glass do the work. None of this is fussiness. It is the whole difference between a wine that merely sits there and a wine that sings.

Actually, Pair the Sauce

One last thing, and it is the thing most people miss. You are not really pairing the wine with the bird. You are pairing it with the whole plate, and on a game plate the loudest voice is usually the sauce. Bread sauce and game chips keep things gentle and point you towards Pinot. A redcurrant-and-juniper jus adds sweetness and lift, which a southern Rhone answers happily. A dark, bloody hare sauce, sometimes finished with a little chocolate, wants the biggest, most savoury red in the house. Taste the sauce, then choose. The bird will follow.

So the moors are open, the birds are coming south, and the kitchens are busy. Get the bottle right and a plate of game becomes one of the great pleasures of the English autumn, the kind of meal that makes the clocks going back feel almost worth it. Get it slightly wrong and, honestly, it is still delicious, which tells you everything about how forgiving this whole business really is. Start with a good red Burgundy. You can improvise gloriously from there.