About me
"But you're not English, are you?"
No. I am American. The name "Englishman's Claret" refers to a balanced, elegant style of Bordeaux. It's a style I favor and I happened to really fall in love with Bordeaux when I was a student at Oxford. The name was whimsical choice that seemed appropriate for the time - and soon I was in too deep to change it.
To some extent, I dislike the phrase "wine collector." Of course I do collect wines, but the phrase seems to miss the defining features of any passionate hobbyist. There's great pleasure in owning dusty bottles, but greater pleasure yet in opening them, savoring them, and in understanding them.
Once great Bordeaux has grabbed you, it's impossible to avoid the siren song of another bottle. It's not long before you're engrossed by the evolution of a wine over its life cycle, by the evolution of wine styles in Bordeaux over time, by the grand terroirs that give us these treasures, by the people who engage in the art and science of viticulture and then the alchemy of its transformation into wine. In that way, my entry into the wine world wasn't different than most. I didn't pick the hobby, it picked me.
I am a physician - in other words, like most of those reading this, not a wine professional. I hope that my thoughts on the wines herein, often purchased by myself, sometimes consumed on more than one occasion, and typically enjoyed over the course of hours rather than minutes, offers information which is different but complementary to that provided by the professional critic.
I hope the information in this site inspires you to open a bottle, to enjoy it, to understand it a bit better, to drink it with friends, to go find its origins, and to meet the people who made it.