In his days as an England hooker, Brian Moore, aka 'Pitbull', was famous for annoying Gallic rugby teams. He added to the pre-match bonhomie during one Five Nations international by describing the French opposition as 'brilliant but brutal, like 15 Eric Cantonas' in the season that Cantona jumped into the crowd to kung-fu kick a Crystal Palace fan. But Moore's on-the-pitch persona was always at odds with his taste and intelligence.

He was the front row forward who earned a living as a top solicitor, who watched art house films, who read Shakespeare before matches and, almost inevitably, who enjoyed fine wine. 'Everyone used to laugh at me and call me a pseud,' he says. 'My team-mates thought that wine was just a part of my attempt to appear sophisticated, but they were wrong. I really enjoy drinking it.'

Moore admits that, in wine terms, his background was anything but sophisticated. His parents were Methodist lay preachers in Halifax and 'if they drank wine at all, it was sweet and German'. Moore drank bitter in his late teens and early twenties. But when he went to Nottingham University to study law, he developed a taste for lager because the 'local bitter was so bad'. Back in Halifax between terms, he tried to order a lager top in his local. 'The publican looked at me deadpan and said: "Brian, you know we don't serve cocktails in here." Imagine if I'd asked for a glass of wine.'

Working as a lawyer after graduation, Moore began to visit wine bars in Nottingham. 'I was starting to get interested in wine, but if I'm honest the main reason I went to wine bars was because they attracted better-looking women.' His interest in things vinous really took off when he started to play for England, courtesy of an indulgent waiter at the Petersham hotel in Richmond, the team's London headquarters.

'We had free run of the cellar in the week before an international, although we never drank anything after Wednesday night. Two or three of us liked good wine and we found this waiter who would give us a bottle of Clos de Vougeot or Château Palmer at £60 and put it down on the England team bill as four bottles of plonk. The management never caught on and it was a really nice introduction to the higher echelons of wine lists.' Eventually, much to Moore's disappointment, the waiter left. 'Nobody else would do it. I was really pissed off.'

Despite what happened at the Petersham hotel, wine belonged to Moore's legal rather than rugby-playing life. 'At that level, rugby players aren't big drinkers, despite what people think. The matches are too important. They're binge drinkers, where appropriate, but that's different.'

Touring with England and the Lions, Moore had very little chance to sample wine in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, although he has since become a big fan of Aussie reds, especially Shiraz. 'We didn't have time,' he says. 'Not like the cricketers.'

It was on a tour to South Africa in 1994 that, bizarrely, he was appointed wine correspondent of Today newspaper. 'I thought it was a tour wind-up at first, but then I remembered that I'd met Richard Stott, the editor, at a corporate dinner and I'd made a comment about a wine he'd ordered. He told me he'd never met a wine snob from Halifax before.'

Moore became a national wine correspondent for a year. ('If they didn't like the column, they could have told me. They didn't have to close the paper.') And in that time, he made himself the most popular man in his street. 'I used to take cases of opened samples round to my neighbours. At first they thought I'd made a planning application, but they loved the free bottles in the end.'

When he retired from rugby in 1995, Moore was free to indulge his interest in food and wine. Now a businessman, he's a keen and talented home cook, and drinks wine most days. He has around 40 cases stored in a bonded warehouse, because 'not many flats in Soho have decent cellars', and buys wine when he and his wife need it. He purchases most of his wine from Thresher, Wine Rack, Oddbins, Corney & Barrow and Berry Brothers & Rudd and insists that, despite what Richard Stott said, he's not a wine snob. 'For me, the wine in the bottle is important but mood, time and especially company are the things that really matter.'

Moore is mainly a red wine drinker. His favourite wine style is St Emilion, with Château Figeac his top property. In fact, Moore is a bit of a Francophile, something that might surprise the Frenchmen who used to play rugby against him. His Old World tastes are reflected in the balance of his six Desert Island wines:

Four of the line-up are from France: 1989 Château Figeac, a great vintage of a wine that Moore has in his collection; 1991 Guigal Côte Rôtie, Brune et Blonde, a good value Rhône that reminds him of skiing trips to the Alps; Ruinart Brut Rosé Champagne, his favourite fizz; and, best of all, 1982 Château Margaux. A lifelong Labour Party voter, Moore drank the Margaux at Oz Clarke's house on the night of the 1997 election.

'We all had to bring along bottles from previous election vintages. We saved the best until Michael Portillo lost his seat. It was our Portillo moment.' The other two wines are both from Australasia and are for 'everyday drinking' chez Moore. The first is the big, muscular 1998 d'Arenberg Ironstone Pressings Shiraz/Grenache (£17.99, Oddbins) from McLaren Vale in Australia, while the second is a white wine, the classically gooseberryish 2000 Villa Maria Private Bin Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc (£6.99, widely available) from New Zealand. He says he'd be happy to drink either with any of his former adversaries from Down Under. Well, almost any. 'I'm not sure I'd choose to drink wine with David Campese, and he wouldn't be able to close his mouth long enough to swallow it any way.'