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Patrick Alexander LOVER of WINE & WORDS |
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Born in England, Patrick
Alexander studied philosophy at Sussex University before joining Price
Waterhouse & Co. as a chartered accountant in the City of London. He
moved to France where he married and raised his children. After a decade
as an international tax consultant based in Europe, Patrick and his
family moved to America where he worked as international business
director for two different software corporations and finally was hired
as Director of Professional Advancement at the University of Miami.
WINE:
Patrick moved to S.W. France in his
early 20s and raised his family in the Bordeaux wine country of Perigord, the Piedmont wine country on the Swiss/ Italian border, and the
wine country of northern California, before fanally moving to South Florida -
where there are no vineyards. As Director at the University of Miami he
developed a popular wine appreciation program which was offered
exclusively in the Faculty Lounge. For almost twenty years, Patrick
has offered the very popular six-week wine class at Books & Books and
the Coral Gables Museum. Following the 2020 Covid pandemic, Patrick
switched his in-person classes to Zoom – some of which can be seen on
YouTube.
Wine In a Time of Cholera. WORDS: 'Marcel Proust's Search For Lost Time' was published by Vintage Books in 2008 and was based on a year long course that Patrick had taught at the University of Miami. Another book which was based on a program he first developed at UM was 'The Booklover's Guide to Wine'. His more recent book, ‘A Dance to Lost Time’ is a study comparing the novels of Marcel Proust with the novels of Anthony Powell and was released in 2022, the centenary of Proust’s death. Patrick's most recent book is BOOMER, which tells the history of the baby boomer generation, while a previous book, 'Building Paradise' tells the history of Miami and South Florida.
Patrick’s fictional works
include 'The Nigerian Letter' and also the Greenhaven Trilogy –
three novels set in South Florida - "Death by Water", "Death on the
Eighth”, and "Dead Naked".
Coral Gables Museum: In addition to his six-week
wine classes, Patrick also offers occasional one-night introductory wine
classes to reflect exhibits in the Museum. For example, an exhibit of
rare historic Spanish maps of the exploration of Florida anchored a
class on Spanish sherry. Other classes have focused
on Coral Gable's Sister Cities, examining their history, culture and of
course the local food and wines. Past classes include:
"Granada and the Wines of
Spain"
"Aix-en-Provence and the
wines of the Rhone Valley"
"Cartagena and the Spirits
of Colombia"
"Pisa and the Wines of
Tuscany"
"Quebec and the ice-wines
of Canada"
"Curitiba and the wines of
Brazil"
Ruth's Chris: Patrick hosts the
occasional wine-pairing dinner at the Coral Gables Ruth's Chris
restaurant, also on Aragon Avenue. A recent dinner featured a Grand
Tour of Europe, sampling the local wines and food of France's Loire
Valley, Spain's Rioja region, Italy's Tuscany province and concluding
with desert in the Mosel Valley of Germany.
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