Oz Clarke’s Grapes and Wines: A Guide to Varieties and Flavours -

The Wines of Spain (Mitchell Beazley Classic Wine Library) The transformation of the Spanish wine industry over the last 20 years has been astonishing. From a state of very considerable decay it has re-invented itself with great vigour and style. Four decades ago such reputation as the wines of Spain had rested on the declining quality of Sherry and the occasional majestic Rioja towering above the surrounding sea of mediocre, oxidised table wines. “How things have changed!” exclaims Julian Jeffs in the introduction to his valuable The Wines of Spain, the latest addition to Faber and Faber’s series of wine books. Over the course of two years Jeffs put in a great deal of intensive research in Spain, travelling the length and breadth of the country, visiting growers and tasting their wines. The effort has paid off in a wealth of engrossing detail.

The volume is organised into sections dealing with the main provinces or geographical regions–Aragon, Catalunya, Andalucia and so on–then within those by the individual Denominacion de Origen (DO). Within each DO the leading or most interesting bodegas are profiled, allowing Jeffs to build up a cumulative portrait of the regional characters. Especially evocative are the portions of the book dealing with the ancient and distinguished Sherry houses in Andalucia, many of them of course founded in the 18th or 19th centuries by British or Irish merchants. The account of the great Bodegas Vega Sicilia in Castilla is emblematic of the progress of the entire Spanish wine industry: Producing some of the world’s finest wine up to the 1920s, it fell into poor practices and the quality and reliability of the wine suffered badly. Under the modernising current owners the wine has regained its former reputation. According to Julian Jeffs, Vega Sicilia “is on a Wagnerian scale, with all that master’s subtlety and complexity.” –Robin Davidson

Larousse Encyclopedia of Wine (Larousse) -

A Wine Miscellany Customer Review: Genius in a bottle
For the enthusiastic wine amateaur or the wine connoisseur this book is a hugely enjoyable read. Whether you are just dipping into a couple of items or reading cover to cover this book will inform, entertain and encourage you. It demystifies the traditional snobbery associated with wines in amusing and entertaining way. Moreover it might even get you to try some of the wines mentioned in the book.Great fun and well worth the money.
Customer Review: Everything you always wanted to know…
I always thought the Duke of Clarence drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. After reading ‘A Wine Miscellany’ I now know that the story came from chronicler Dominic Mancini, writing just five years after Richard the Third’s death. I also know that Malmsey, which I had idely supposed to be related to Madeira, actually came from Crete. So next time (if there is a next time) I confront a bottle of Retsina, it’ll be with due respect.

For this and much more, I am indebted to Graham Harding, who has produced, rather than a miscellany of wine - a cornucopia. All the usual wine scandals are here, but so too is evidence of a thirst for knowledge and accuracy that betrays the writer’s earlier life as a Cambridge history graduate, Here I have to declare an interest. As one of those too, I am naturally going to look favourably on this fellow’s work. And as a fellow wine imbiber, I’m not going to ignore the subject matter, either.

But enough of all that; this is a subject you could make unutterably boring, and Harding masterfully avoids the anorak pitfalls. There’s fact mixed with scandal on every page - there are enough Chateau D’Yqem price stories (my favourite’s the one about Piers Morgan and Marco Pierre White on page 84) to fuel many a dinner parrty conversation, for instance. But did you know that Thomas Jefferson owned the most expensive bottle of D’Yqem ever sold? No, neither did I (it was a 1787). The result is light enough for pick up and put down reading yet solid enough to add to knowledge. It’s nicely laid out and illustrated too.

From highest vineyard to lowest wine practice, it’s here. At a price which has it firmly among the great value gift books, its 172 enjoyably fact-packed pages should find their way into many a wine fan’s Christmas stocking. Enjoy.