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Should you get peckish in this quaint, one-steeple village in the heart of Burgundy, cradle region of French gastronomy, here is my No. 1 tip: Skip the Cantonese pork buns. Ditto the beef tacos, tandoori chicken, sushi rolls and lamb tajine.

As an aficionado of more reliable fare from this vine-swathed part of central-eastern France, such as boeuf bourguignon and poulet de Bresse, I should have known better, yes. But I have an excuse; I was forced to eat the stuff.

Such was the range of buffet options at a recent gala held as part of a biennial, weeklong expo for professional wine buyers and journalists called Les Grands Jours de Bourgogne.

Dubbed "Osez! Bourgognes" (Dare! Burgundy), the banquet was designed to showcase the gastronomic versatility of Burgundy's red and white wines, universally regarded as the world's quintessential pinot noirs and chardonnays. The overly sweet pork buns and tame tacos did little to advance the reputation of Burgundy's chefs in the versatility department, but the venue did much to stimulate the thirst.

Dinner was held in a grand, stone-walled hall of the Château de Meursault, an 11th-century castle built atop a vast labyrinth of spooky tunnels with enough room for 700,000 bottles and 2,000 barrels.

Despite the undistinguished food, the evening did vividly underscore a maxim I had long held to be true, that Burgundy's wines are the most adaptable beverages on the planet. That's saying a lot for a region that leans almost exclusively on two grape varieties.

The whites, often imbued with notes of hazelnut, honey and minerals, are like no other chardonnays in the world. The best reds, all based on pinot noir, hint strongly at berry jam, often tantalizing the nose with secondary aromas of truffle, tobacco and earth, especially as they age.

One of my biggest food-pairing epiphanies was over a simple tapas cube of parmesan cheese dabbed with 25-year-old balsamic vinegar. The morsel was paired with a Chablis premier cru, Domaine Nathalie et Gilles Fèvre Chablis Vaulorent 2006. Now, to a wine outsider, it would have been no big deal; to an insider, it was like Dylan going electric.

Chablis, the lean, supercrisp white from Burgundy's chilly north, is traditionally summoned into service for extremely delicate fare, notably raw oysters. Yet here it was paired, compellingly, with vinegar (no easy task for any wine) and a hunk of salty cheese that in Italy is typically paired with Barolo, a powerful, tannic red. And it worked.

It was one of the more unusual marriages devised for the evening by wine consultant Etienne Laporte, hired as gastronomic Sherpa for the evening by the event's host, the Bureau Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bourgogne, a trade association.

"I began with a question," Mr. Laporte told me during dinner. "How can I tame this tremendous acidity and the salt of the cheese and the creamy texture of the vinegar?" His answer was to choose a wine with very high acidity - which in Burgundy means Chablis - but also one with lots of flavour intensity. That narrowed the field to either a grand cru or premier cru, the most concentrated wines in the Burgundian classification hierarchy, grown in vineyards with the best soils and microclimates and strictest crop-yield standards.

"My point of view was to say that this particular Chablis is a very powerful wine, because it's a premier cru, so it has a lot of concentration," said Mr. Laporte, who is based in Marseille and has degrees both in agriculture and oenology. Such wines aren't cheap, typically running between $35 and $60 for widely available brands. But premier cru Chablis still tends to be much cheaper than comparable quality white Burgundy from more southerly communes, which tend to cost between $50 and $80. I was amazed at how well the finer quality expensive Chablis paired with all sorts of food during the evening.

That same Chablis performed surprisingly well in my own test with another combo from the Italy table, bresaola (thin slices of dried beef) topped with peppery arugula. The bitterness of the salad greens even amplified the background fruit of the wine, improving its flavour.

Although, as I say, the tacos could have used more zip, one could only be impressed by the way they harmonized with a red Burgundy, Domaine Harmand Geoffroy Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaux Saint-Jacques (the name is so long I forgot to write down the year). Pinot noir, on which the wine is based, produces relatively light, agile red wines. Conventional pairing wisdom might have favoured a bigger red for spiced beef, such as a shiraz from Australia or zinfandel from California. But the Gevrey stood up admirably.

I was similarly impressed with how several other Burgundian reds matched with Moroccan lamb and oily Indian samosas. The wines included a Boisset Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru Les Charmes 2006 and a Fixin Premier Cru Clos du Chapitre 2005 from Guy and Ivan Dufouleur. I'm not saying I'm going to crack open an $80 red next time I call for curry delivery, but they were impressive.

To be fair, the evening produced some train wrecks. I and others at my table were not raving about Mr. Laporte's choice of a white Santenay (a medium-bodied chardonnay) with gnocchi in a mushroom-cream sauce. One German journalist seated next to me said he preferred a sparkling crémant de Bourgogne instead. "It was amazing," he said. "Very interesting." I wasn't so sure. But by that point in the evening I frankly would have gone for a Pepto-Bismol.

The biggest reason for the food friendliness of Burgundian wines, I think, is acidity. All good Burgundies, white or red, share a crisp edge thanks to grapes grown in a cool climate. Acid cleanses the palate and invigorates the taste buds, a fact soft drink producers have known for ages, when you think about it. That is more than one can say of most other red wines, such as those based on merlot, cabernet sauvignon and syrah.

And here, perhaps, is a more original insight. Burgundy has a temperature advantage. The red wines in particular tend to be served colder than most reds. Certainly that was the case at the Château de Meursault dinner, where pinots must have been no warmer than 15 C. Cold accentuates the perception of acidity and also refreshes the mouth, which is especially welcome in the case of spicy food. I know many of you prefer your reds at room temperature. But I, for one, will be serving my pinot noirs at castle temperature from now on, especially when beef tacos and Indian samosas are on the menu.