Summary
Everything you could possibly want to know about wine, in one fully up-to-date A-Z volume! The Oxford Companion to Wine is a uniquely comprehensive and in-depth A-Z reference book on every aspect of wine: more than 4,000 entries covering topics from history through geography, geology, soil science, viticulture, winemaking, packaging, academia, technology, and regulations to people and places, tasting, writing, and the language of wine. The system of cross-references takes the reader from one entry to another, showing how all these topics are interconnected in the fascinating story of wine in its most traditional and modern forms. This new fifth edition, which benefits from the knowledge and experience of over one hundred new contributors, all experts in their field or geographical region, is expanded by 264 new entries, and every existing entry has been reviewed, updated, and polished. The text is more international than ever, written for wine lovers of every persuasion, including those who love wine but want to know more in order to increase their enjoyment of this endlessly fascinating liquid, and those who are intent on studying wine, professionally or privately. This is a huge treasure trove of knowledge, for the first time breaking the barrier of one million words, but the alphabetical format and the links between the entries make it easily navigable, and the language, while not shying away from complex science, is intended to open the door to every curious reader looking for answers on every question they have ever wanted to ask about wine.
Julia Harding MW, editor of The Oxford Companion to Wine, studied modern languages at Cambridge before becoming a freelance book editor. She qualified as a Master of Wine in 2004, winning the Robert Mondavi award for best theory papers and the Tim Derouet Memorial Prize for excellence in all parts of the exam and dissertation. She is Senior Editor at JancisRobinson.com, where she has been a member of the team since 2005. She iscartographic editor of The World Atlas of Wine (8th edn, 2019) and co-author of Wine Grapes (2012). She was awarded Wines of Portugal Personality of the Year in Europe (2023). Jancis Robinson OBE MW, founding editor of The OxfordCompanion to Wine, is one of the world's leading authorities on wine. The first person outside the wine trade to have passed the notoriously tough Master of Wine exams, she now writes weekly for the Financial Times and even more frequently for JancisRobinson.com, which has members all over the world. Voted the first-ever International Wine Communicator of the Year in 1996, she has won multiple awards and written many books. Most recently she wrote The 24-Hour Wine Expert(2017), co-wrote The World Atlas of Wine (8th edn, 2019), Wine Grapes (2012), and hosted the BBC Maestro online wine course An Understanding of Wine. Tara Q. Thomas, assistant editor of The Oxford Companion to Wine, is themanaging editor of JancisRobinson.com. Based in New York, she has worked in the wine industry for 25 years, most significantly as executive editor of Wine & Spirits Magazine but also as a freelance writer, editor, wine judge, and wine educator. She has also contributed to two Oxford Companions: Spirits & Cocktails and Cheese.
