Marc Bouffard is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He is also, by any measure, one of the most respected independent voices in fine wine — built not from a role in the trade, not from a formal credential, but from pure passion, a scientist's rigor, and an Instagram account called @englishmans_claret.

In this episode, Marc and Jeff sit down to talk about how all of it happened: the 1966 Léoville Barton that opened a door to the Barton-Sartorius family; the vertical of Ducru-Beaucaillou going back to 1929 that began a lasting friendship with Bruno Borie; and why a Harvard neurologist with friends "in real life" eventually said yes to Instagram — and wrote a 368-page book.

That book is Saint-Julien: Vineyards, Cellars, People, and Place (Académie du Vin Library), the first volume in a planned series covering all of Bordeaux's major appellations. It covers all eleven classified growths of Saint-Julien, with tasting notes stretching back to 1922, and a deliberate choice to leave out numerical scores — a decision Marc says made his writing significantly better.

In this episode:

• How Marc built trust and access inside the châteaux without any formal role in the wine trade
• The "Englishman's Claret" origin story — and the Oxford tasting that first made him think, how can two wines from the same place be so different?
• Why Saint-Julien is the archetypal Bordeaux, and why its lack of a first growth may actually be a strength
• What "the long tour" means as a philosophy — and why asking why matters more than knowing what
• The case for Bordeaux's extraordinary value right now, and where the perception problem still lives
• En primeur: who it works for, who it doesn't, and what he sees changing
• Why he removed scores from the book — and why his tasting notes immediately improved when he did
• Old bottles and what they tell you that recent vintages can't: a scientist's approach to terroir
• The "looking back / looking forward" structure that makes the book a document meant to age
• Saint-Estèphe and Pauillac: the next volumes already underway

Promo: Use code UNCORKING at checkout for 15% off Saint-Julien at the Académie du Vin Library.

https://academieduvinlibrary.com/products/saint-julien-marc-bouffard