Former England cricket captain David Gower with columnist Will Lyons. Matthew Lloyd for The Wall Street Journal

David Gower pauses over his glass of wine. The former England cricket captain, who has a penchant for French wines, particularly those from Bordeaux, is trying to recall whether he has ever played cricket there.

"Have I played in France?" he repeats, topping us both up with a chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc from a vineyard he describes as "round the corner, over the hill and just the other side" of the Loire's famous Sancerre. The answer, after some thought, is no.

The Bordeaux Cricket Club, with its picturesque pitch set amid the vines of Château Giscours, may have passed Mr. Gower by, but having scored more than 8,000 runs as a batsman for England, he's not one to let a question beat his off-side stump. "There is a cricket club of which I am an honorary member, called the White Hunters," he recalls. "The White Hunters are rubbish, self-confessed rubbish, but they tend to tour France every year and they come up against an eclectic bunch."

Drinking Now

Some of David Gower's favorites

He says they have it right: The tour is for fun, the players are fun and they play cricket against lovely people, with a backdrop of woods, châteaux and vineyards. "Which is actually a lovely image," he adds, extemporizing on the instinctive marriage between cricket and wine. "If ever you go to Lord's and look around on any Test match day, there are any number of amateur wine lovers, a huge number of wine shippers, merchants, sellers, producers.... There is a natural synergy between a summer sport and a nice glass of wine. It keeps you going."

As a cricketer, Mr. Gower's style of play was effortless. A left-hander, he didn't so much thwack the ball as deftly hit it to the boundary, making the game look easy and uncomplicated. In wine terms, he could be compared with a glass of red Burgundy—all finesse and elegance—as opposed to a Bordeaux, whose seductive power would be better suited as a wine simile to his England teammate Ian Botham.

"I'll take that," smiles Mr. Gower, who is known these days as the face of Sky's cricket coverage. This summer, he will head up the commentary for one of the biggest contests in the sport: the five-match Ashes Test series between England and Australia.

Today, as we meet in London over some of his favorite wines, he portrays himself as a keen amateur—albeit one with 30 years of wine-tasting experience. At his home in Hampshire, the cellar has enough room for 600 bottles. "Make that 500," he corrects himself. "Let's not exaggerate." He loves Burgundy and Pinot Noir from New Zealand, but there is also a stable of rather grand Bordeaux, including his favorites, Châteaux Lynch Bages and Pontet Canet, as well as 1983 Mouton Rothschild, Lafite and Margaux.

Mr. Gower portrays himself as a keen amateur—albeit one with 30 years of wine-tasting experience. Matthew Lloyd for The Wall Street Journal

Although he never drank during a match, his memories are peppered with images of popping corks of Bollinger at the close of play, blowing a week's allowance on a few bottles of wine with Mr. Botham and their teammate Allan Lamb, and scurrying out of the Pavilion at Lord's for a sneaky glass of Champagne. "When you are playing and younger and foolhardy, you take more risks," he says.

Touring with England and playing in Australia always involved visits to wineries. In those days international matches were played over five days, with a rest day on the Sunday. It was during these tours that he developed friendships with McLaren Vale wine producer Geoff Merrill and the Hill Smith family, Yalumba proprietors.

"The Adelaide rest day was infamous," he recalls. "Both teams would go up to Yalumba.... We would be given enormous amounts of food, enormous amounts of wine, and somehow we would get back to Adelaide in the evening and resume the game the following morning," he says. "It didn't seem to get any better than that."

Perhaps he ought to go on that French tour after all.

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