Blame the Saints, not the one's from New Orleans who I think are playing in the Superbowl this weekend, no, the Patron Saints of Wine. Or maybe it was my curiosity about that subject matter that started it, the same curiosity that anecdotally has been bad news for felines. But this curiosity was divined.
I was sitting here on a quiet Sunday Googling, the whim of the moment, 'Patron Saints of Wine.' There are 441,000 results for this search, but if you are like me, you have patience for a page or two. I tend to click - scan - backspace for a while, and then return to what seemed worthy. One of my returns was to the first result listed, some guy's blog named "Bordeaux Undiscovered." Scrolling down the page I noticed the side bar had a lot of info about wine that might help a person who knows nothing about wine know something about wine. Of course, we've been here before. I've been on all the websites, read through all the experts opinions, and to be honest it's been so overwhelming, I feel so vastly incapable, that I've not learned too much at all. For some reason it's not sticking. So I expected no less from this sight, but the subjects were interesting to me and I sat here a couple of hours reading this guy's blog. For which I got paid. I know!
Nick writes the story of an idea. What was happening was, for every post I read I actually understood something, versus the nothing I've been understanding for a year now reading other people's contributions. Nick writes his posts in a way that speaks to my way of comprehending something; he gives a context and then delineates its parts. All I'd been reading was parts, but now I was able to see how it all fit together, each post both self-contained and part of the larger machine.
So I emailed Nick over there at the Bordeaux Undiscovered Wine Shop in the UK to thank him. (Life is short; say 'thank you.') What I didn't expect was to hear back, and to hear back rather immediately. Next day was an email from Sarah, the first of a quite a few, really, so unnecessarily generous and open, all for a troglodyte who knows nothing about wine. What's wrong with these people?
Isn't the world cool?
Last night Sarah emailed me at 2a.m. her time to answer my question asking for a clarification on shipping. Here's her response:
"We do sell to the USA (and internationally) but only on the fine wine site Interest In Wine. Due to the complex shipping laws the different states are governed by the customer normally has to arrange shipping themselves but we are happy to combine our efforts to get the job done as we have various contacts etc. Our financial wizard Paul arranges all this and we have negotiants (Bordeaux wine merchants) who we deal with. Our wines are either kept at the chateau in barrel as En Primeur (wine futures) or in bottle in France/UK. Unfortunately we can't do this on Bordeaux-Undiscovered as the wines are petite chateaux and a fraction of the price - therefore we simply can't justify the expense . . at the moment anyways."
Give it a peruse, you won't be disappointed. Oh, and while you're over there, don't miss this one posted on Nick's blog yesterday.
The World Famous Cave. Thank you Sarah and Nick. Of over six thousand saints, only one is considered the patron saint of generosity: St. Nicholas of Myra. He the Santa Claus prototype. Hey, wait - Nick? Nah...
