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Wine Snobbery – book review

Henry Jeffreys
Henry Jeffreys
Thursday 4 December 2025 • 4 min read
wine writing
Wine Snobbery book cover

A scathing take on the wine industry that reminds us to keep asking questions – about wine, and about everything else.

Wine Snobbery
An insider’s guide to the booze business
Andrew Barr
Published by Faber & Faber
ISBN 9780571150601
Reissued in 1992 by Simon & Schuster as Wine Snobbery: An expose (ISBN 9780671708047)

Andrew Barr’s Wine Snobbery upset a lot of people when it came out in 1988. Serena Sutcliffe MW threatened legal action over Barr’s criticisms, and she wasn’t the only one upset: Robert Parker, Jane MacQuitty, Charles Metcalfe and other writers were all taken to task. Yet Parker, to...

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