Jancis Robinson's Wine Course

This is a fully revised, updated and expanded edition of one of my most useful books, the one I've come to call Oxford Lite – a full colour, beautifully designed, bells-and-whistles introduction to wine designed for those who don't necessarily know anything at all about it – but all underpinned by Master of Wine knowledge, ie very solid facts under all the, I hope, encouraging prose. In this new edition are 32 more pages – an increase of 10 per cent, most of the new space going to New World wine regions, plus a bit more on Italy. The new, fully revised edition is also already available in German (Hallwag), Dutch (Spectrum), Danish (Gyldendal), Polish (WIG Press), Hungarian (Alexandra) and Spanish (Art Blume). 

I wrote the original edition to go with our 10-part BBC TV series Jancis Robinson's Wine Course when it was first shown in 1995. It was designed to be a complete introduction to wine with the authority of the Oxford Companion but much more basic and with lots of lovely pictures. It was a bestseller in the UK and also published in the US, in Germany as Weinkurs and in France as Tout Apprendre sur le Vin. (It's the ultimate compliment to a wine author to see their book translated into French.) I revised the vintages and things for the paperback edition in 1999 but this new, longer book is a full and complete update, revision and expansion. 

I am, as any regular visitor to this site must know by now, a workaholic, so I have gone through the original volume with a fine toothed comb and now believe it's as fine a hardbacked introduction to the delicious subject of wine as you could hope to find. 

Comments on the first edition: 

'a vintage volume... the most notable volume of its kind since Kevin Zraly's Windows on the World wine course ... Robinson makes you want to sign up for the course.' Peter M Gianotti, Newsday 

'She has an encyclopedic grasp of her subject and doesn't put a foot wrong ... a splendid introduction to the world of wine, authoritative without self-importance, informative without pedantry, sure-footed without arrogance and, with its crisp and often witty style, it confirms the fundamental thesis of the book that "the point of wine is to give pleasure".' Stephen Brook, Decanter