Customer Reviews
Excellent book for the right audience - By: J. Brand, 05 Jan 2008 
The ever increasing size of this book reflects the increasing interestin wine, so it now lands with an impressive thump on your desktop. Though its content doesn't always reflect who that new market is.
The authors start with a, rather meandering, description of the history & production of wine & some basic notes on tasting, appreciation & handling of wine. Some of this is very useful, most of it is very basic for someone who already knows the subject & all of it could do with some editing to make the best of their material. Some of it punctures some of the myths about wine such as how long wines should be laid down & do you really need to let wine breath. Elsewhere they perpetuate some of those myths, for example they still seem to give the whole concept of 'terroir' an almost mystical reverence.
That introduction, however, is not really the point of this volume. This appears to be aimed at the new wine connoisseur or someone who wants to be a connoisseur. The real body of this is a fairly comprehensive atlas of vineyards & producers. The detail with which they cover their subject is variable but excusably so as it reflects the varying national interestin wine. So France is coveredin incredible detail while England, however much it's wine industry may be growing, is given one brief page. Annoying when you had hoped for something comprehensive but understandable. As long as you stick to well established wine producing regions & buy from those regions this will have something to tell you.
Which, excellent as it is, is also a problem this book has. Ninety per cent of the wine buying public, whether they are buying something cheap & nasty from tescos or something better from a merchant will be buying a blend; a chardonnay or shiraz whose provenance can be narrowed down no more closely than southern Australia, South Africa or so on. Good as those wines are this book doesn't helpin selecting them.
If you've moved from just buying a muscadet or whatever to buying 'something from the Loire Valley' then this is ideal for you. If you want to do so then this is ideal. If you like wine & maps then this is interesting if not useful. If you, like me, are happy buying muscadet & merlot but have no real desire to take your wine buying much further then this is probably not for you. So, interesting but impractical for most of us but excellent for the right audience.
The World According to Wine - By: Keith E. Webb, 23 Dec 2007 
At 400 pages, British wine experts Huge Johnson & Jancis Robinson have created their most exhaustive atlas yet, & a tremendous resource. The book is gorgeous - with a generous amount of color illustrations, photos, & maps, including 2 page spreads. All told there are 48 extra pages over the previous edition.
The 6th edition contains 200 maps, all revised & updates, including 20 new maps. The introduction contains essays on winein the ancient world, vine types, grape varieties, weather, terroir, the wine growers calendar, how wine is made, etc. etc. Robinson has said this new edition took two years of concentrated effort. It was worth it!
Then the authors dive deep into wine regions organized by country. Each region or country covered has a colored map, an essay about the characteristics of the reason, vital statistics, & a few wine labels. France has the most with 55 regions featured, indeed, a quarter of the volume (100 pages) is on France. Italy features 18 regions. Spain 9. Portugal 6. Germany 12. United States 17. Australia 12. New Zealand 4. Other countries covered include: England & Wales, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Western Balkans, Bulgaria, Romania, Former Soviet Republics, Greece, Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, South Africa, China, Japan, & the rest of Asia. I find the information scant on Chile & Argentina, which is odd given their increased market exposure & rising excellence of wines.
The authors have expanded New World coverage,in keeping with expanded exposure & quality of the wine producedin these regions, for Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, South America, & South Africa. These are additions, with nothing taken away from the previous fabulous coverage of Old & New World wine regions.
Since the first editionin 1971, the World Atlas of Wine has sold more than 4 million copies & I'm happy to add this new 6th edition to my library, especially at such a reasonable price. It's always a pleasure to look up some background information on tonight's glass of wine.
