The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia 4th Edition by Tom Stevenson
90 out of 100

Published Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Overview

The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopaedia is a weighty tome with 664 pages. It follows the standard shape of having a lengthy introduction (39 pages) and then divides the world into countries and regions. Each region gets a brief description followed by a very good selection of top producers to look out for.

The introduction, not surprisingly since the book is branded Sotheby’s, starts with a couple of pages of wine auctions before running through fairly standard sections on how to taste wine, terrior, viticulture. I did find the section on oak to be very interesting along with an excellent description of different types of soils, and the section of trellising was quite good.

But how does it stack up as a reference book? On a recent trip to Burgundy and Northern Italy I took this book and Hugh Johnson's Wine Atlas. While I read the sections from Sotheby’s wine encyclopedia I tended to find the Wine Atlas more useful. The maps are ok but not outstanding, the text is concise if somewhat short. What Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia has over other Wine Atlases and Encyclopedias is the descriptions on the wineries. This has by far the best descriptions of wineries with short but useful descriptions, which for producers I know well I agree with. It is this that separates Tom’s book from its competition who usually only list a couple of recommended producers in each region. Interestingly Tom does not claim to have tasted all the wines from recommended producers, but he is honest about this.

In the auction world Bordeaux is king and at 72 pages or just over 10% of the book, it is the book's key region. France again dominates this book with 207 or 36% of wine region pages dedicated to it. Possibly as a consequence Italy, a hard region for me and another hugely important European producer, has only 39 pages. Spain has 25. America gets a huge 72 pages, and this highlights the importance of the American market to Sotheby’s. New Zealand gets a dignified 18 pages while Australia gets 48 pages and surprisingly Tom gives an okay description of the minor Queensland viticulture regions. Finally being a bit biased, Tom’s coverage of the UK vineyard scene is certainly the best of all the atlases and encyclopedias that he competes with.

The focus on producers makes Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia a useful variation on the general wine atlas scene, and would make a worthy second world reference book. Its lack of high quality detailed maps and too brief descriptions of regions mean unless you like to drop producer names into conversations it should not be your primary source for each region. But as a second book it complements both Hugh Johnson's and Oz Clarke's Wine Atlases very well and I recommend it to wine students or of course, wine investors wanting to read up on important producers.

In the end I rated this book 90 out of 100.