Miriam Stoppard is a schizophrenic wine drinker. When she's in London, the vivacious writer, doctor and businesswoman sticks to the limits recommended by the medical profession, partly for health reasons and partly because she's too busy to sit around drinking bottles of wine. 'Wine adds balance to my life when I'm worried about meeting deadlines and mad moments of stress, but I'm pretty abstemious.'
At her second home in France, which she visits every other weekend, she's a very different person. 'I'm far more bibulous when I'm in Gaillac. I'm on holiday and I tend to let myself go.' The environs help. Stoppard's house is surrounded by vineyards and she tries to drink wines produced locally. She and her husband Sir Christopher Hogg are good friends with several Gaillac winemakers and tend to buy from them. 'Gaillac is our wine. I feel rather proprietorial about it. It's part of immersing myself in France.'
France is the country that, somewhat belatedly, prompted Stoppard's love affair with wine. She was brought up in an 'abstemious Geordie-Jewish household' that was totally temperate apart from a sip or two of Sabbath wine on Friday evenings. 'It was gloupy and sweet and tasted like alcoholic Ribena, but to my sister and me it was exciting and exotic.'
As a medical student at London's Royal Free, Stoppard was convinced that she was 'genetically challenged when it came to wine'. She was surrounded by people with an 'infinite capacity for alcohol' and couldn't bring herself to drink wine, beer or spirits. She contracted the wine bug later, at a wedding in Bordeaux. A friend was getting married at Chateâu Palmer in Margaux and, as her father was part owner of the property, served some wonderful wines at the reception. 'There were seven or eight wines in ascending order of quality and I thought: "Ah-ha, this is what wine should taste like." For a penniless junior doctor, Palmer was like another world. I felt as if I'd stumbled onto the set of Last Year in Marienbad.' Bordeaux provided another seminal experience 10 years later, when Baron Philippe de Rothschild invited Stoppard with her first husband, Tom, to Chateâu Mouton-Rothschild. One bottle - a 1918 Chateâu Haut-Brion - remains the greatest wine she has ever tasted. Stoppard admits that she became a 'bit of a French wine snob' because of 'what I'd tasted at Palmer and Mouton'.
A wine course in London (Winewise run by ace teacher Michael Schuster; telephone: 020 7254 9724) opened her mind and palate to the rest of the world. 'Michael encourages you to talk about smells and tastes. If you think you're in the pits at Brands Hatch, then he tells you to say so.' At Winewise Stoppard began to taste and enjoy non-French wines. One of her six current favourites, the 1999 Montana Reserve Sauvignon Blanc is 'my homage to Michael Schuster'. Stoppard doesn't really like Loire Sauvignon Blanc, finding it 'too sour', but this New Zealand example is 'fresh and rich and slightly oaky with a really lovely colour'. Her other two whites are both Chardonnays, one from Burgundy and one from California's Sonoma Valley.
The Burgundy, a 1997 Montagny Les Joncs from Faiveley, is an affordable example of Stoppard's favourite white wine style. And the 1998 Clos du Bois Calcaire Chardonnay is 'aromatic, sunny and fragrant with plenty of body', made in a richer style. Also from California is the 1997 William Hill Cabernet Sauvignon from the Napa Valley. 'We served the wine at my youngest son's wedding recently, so it has happy associations. I love the sunshine in this wine, its fruit and its smoothness.' Smoothness is what appeals to Stoppard about Pinot Noir, too, which is why she's chosen a 1996 Gevrey Chambertin, Les Corbeaux from Boillot. 'Red Burgundy is so gentle on the palate. It's soft and resonant. This reminds me of being a girl on smart dates in my early thirties.' The same could be said of vintage Champagne, no doubt. Stoppard has chosen the 1990 Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame, a de luxe cuvée Champagne that she impressed her at a Sunday lunch recently.
Stoppard tends to purchase wines for immediate drinking, although she has a small cellar in London with 'enough room for 12 cases of wine'. She buys the odd case to lay down, but prefers to leave it in the cellars of her favourite wine merchants, who 'ship it to me when it's ready to drink'. She buys most of her wine from a select list of London merchants - Berry Brothers, Bibendum, Justerini & Brooks, Farr Vintners and a local branch of Oddbins. At her house in France, she has a much bigger cellar, mainly full of south-west French wines, especially from Cahors and Gaillac.
As the author of more than 40 books and a daily advice column in the Mirror, Stoppard is acutely aware of the good and bad sides of alcohol. But she has no hesitation recommending wine to her readers. 'It's pretty clear that wine in moderation is good for you. I haven't seen anything in a medical journal that has persuaded me otherwise.' Down in the South of France, the winemakers of Gaillac must be proud of her.
