Written by the author described by Decanter as “the world’s most informed and accomplished expert on the wines of Bordeaux—bar none”, Inside Bordeaux is a masterwork in scholarship. Containing over 700 pages of in-depth writing, maps that are almost alarming in their detail, and incorporating newly commissioned and (literally) ground-breaking research into Bordeaux’s terroir, Janes Anson’s work is, by a margin, the most up-to-date and scientifically informed book in the Bordeaux canon. Indeed, with the bar set so high, this is a book unlikely to be surpassed in our lifetime (unless there is a second edition)!

Anson has lived and worked in Bordeaux for almost 20 years, and Inside Bordeaux draws on her extensive knowledge of the region and its people, leaving no stone unturned. The book includes 20 appellation overviews, each providing a summary of the area’s history and wine styles, and detailed facts and figures. The author’s coverage of the Châteaux themselves is unusually wide-ranging (covering 800 properties), while also shining a light on the region’s oft-neglected corners of Fronsac, Lalande-de-Pomerol, Castillon and Francs, Bourg and Blaye, et al.

Even with all the producer coverage, the book’s core focus is on terroir and the role of climate and soil in the shaping of Bordeaux’s wines. Anson writes that the intention was to “start assessing Bordeaux in the way that we more typically do for other fine wine regions, such as Burgundy, Barolo, the northern Rhône—by its soils, and by how these individual soils react to different growing conditions year on year.” Such an important theme has never been subject to such detailed and accessible analysis.

To peel back these layers, the author enlisted the expertise of a team of renowned scientists at the very forefront of the research into this region, including internationally acclaimed scientist and professor at Bordeaux University, Kees van Leeuwen, viticulturist David Pernet, climatologist and winemaker Benjamin Bois, and geologist and terroir consultant Pierre Becheler. Their cumulative research was so far-reaching that the book’s scope almost doubled in size during its development. 

Aside from its scholarly depths, the publishers have equally created a highly functional work, where you can quickly get to whatever information you are looking for. The maps (a number of which are fold-out) are impressive in their detail and ambition, giving us a chance to see the topography, soils and climate of Bordeaux in both a new light and a new level of detail.

To say this is a book no Bordeaux lover or student of wine should be without is of course an understatement. But the book also acts as a siren call to those of us who have strayed from the region, perhaps frustrated by Bordeaux’s static system of classification, arcane distribution structure, and the crazy prices of the most famous wines (of course many less-famous producers are now looking like great value!) Anson writes that Bordeaux winegrowers “no longer want to concede to Burgundy the moral high ground on terroir and are determined to prove that the concept in Bordeaux is not something frozen in 1855, and that instead the interplay between grape, soil, climate and man is becoming ever more refined.” 

Bringing a new perspective to what is still the world’s most famous wine region, this just might be the book to help give Bordeaux back to the people. This in itself is a feat, but writing such a comprehensive book that also reveals the terroir of the region like never before is next-level. Inside Bordeaux is a remarkable achievement and we recommend it highly.

There are many books about this most captivating of wine regions—but nothing comes close to Inside Burgundy for its comprehensive depth and detailed information on the vineyards, the wine, the vintages and the growers of this storied region. Since its first publication in 2010, this work has become indispensable for Burgundy lovers and the undisputed benchmark reference on the region.

 The exciting thing we can report here is that the fully updated, second edition takes things to another level! This edition spans a staggering 800 pages, with expanded coverage of 1,200 vineyards, 300 wine villages and 700 domaines. It offers detailed insider knowledge on the places and people that make Burgundy such a special destination for wine lovers. Jasper doesn’t only cover the Côte d’Or, but also Chablis, the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune and Nuits, the Côte Chalonnaise and the Mâconnais.

 The book includes 45 full-colour maps shining a powerful light on Burgundy’s complex network of vineyards and villages. In addition to the revised and updated maps since the first edition, it also includes six completely new ones, which illustrate the plot-by-plot holdings in individual Grand and Premier Cru vineyards.

 It’s also worth pointing out that Jasper Morris wrote and released the first edition when he was for heading up the Burgundy purchasing of Berry Bros. He now works exclusively as a critic and lives full-time in Burgundy, so you can also expect and extra level of critique in the second edition of Inside Burgundy.

Written by the author described by Decanter as “the world’s most informed and accomplished expert on the wines of Bordeaux—bar none”, Inside Bordeaux is a masterwork in scholarship. 

Containing over 700 pages of in-depth writing, maps that are almost alarming in their detail, and incorporating newly commissioned and (literally) ground-breaking research into Bordeaux’s terroir, Janes Anson’s work is, by a margin, the most up-to-date and scientifically informed book in the Bordeaux canon. Indeed, with the bar set so high, this is a book unlikely to be surpassed in our lifetime (unless there is a second edition)!

Anson has lived and worked in Bordeaux for almost 20 years, and Inside Bordeaux draws on her extensive knowledge of the region and its people, leaving no stone unturned. The book includes 20 appellation overviews, each providing a summary of the area’s history and wine styles, and detailed facts and figures. The author’s coverage of the Châteaux themselves is unusually wide-ranging (covering 800 properties), while also shining a light on the region’s oft-neglected corners of Fronsac, Lalande-de-Pomerol, Castillon and Francs, Bourg and Blaye, et al.

Even with all the producer coverage, the book’s core focus is on terroir and the role of climate and soil in the shaping of Bordeaux’s wines. Anson writes that the intention was to “start assessing Bordeaux in the way that we more typically do for other fine wine regions, such as Burgundy, Barolo, the northern Rhône—by its soils, and by how these individual soils react to different growing conditions year on year.” Such an important theme has never been subject to such detailed and accessible analysis.  

To peel back these layers, the author enlisted the expertise of a team of renowned scientists at the very forefront of the research into this region, including internationally acclaimed scientist and professor at Bordeaux University, Kees van Leeuwen, viticulturist David Pernet, climatologist and winemaker Benjamin Bois, and geologist and terroir consultant Pierre Becheler. Their cumulative research was so far-reaching that the book’s scope almost doubled in size during its development. 

Aside from its scholarly depths, the publishers have equally created a highly functional work, where you can quickly get to whatever information you are looking for. The maps (a number of which are fold-out) are impressive in their detail and ambition, giving us a chance to see the topography, soils and climate of Bordeaux in both a new light and a new level of detail.

To say this is a book no Bordeaux lover or student of wine should be without is of course an understatement. But the book also acts as a siren call to those of us who have strayed from the region, perhaps frustrated by Bordeaux’s static system of classification, arcane distribution structure, and the crazy prices of the most famous wines (of course many less-famous producers are now looking like great value!) Anson writes that Bordeaux winegrowers “no longer want to concede to Burgundy the moral high ground on terroir and are determined to prove that the concept in Bordeaux is not something frozen in 1855, and that instead the interplay between grape, soil, climate and man is becoming ever more refined.” 

Bringing a new perspective to what is still the world’s most famous wine region, this just might be the book to help give Bordeaux back to the people. This in itself is a feat, but writing such a comprehensive book that also reveals the terroir of the region like never before is next-level. Inside Bordeaux is a remarkable achievement and we recommend it highly.  

Author: Robert Walters. The rise and rise of a group of artisanal producers in Champagne over the last twenty years has challenged everything we thought we knew about this famous region. In Bursting Bubbles, Robert Walters takes us on a journey to visit these great growers. Along the way, he reveals a secret history of Champagne and dispels many of the myths that still persist about this celebrated wine style. Controversial and ground breaking, Bursting Bubbles will change the way you think about Champagne.

Shortlisted - André Simon Food & Drink Awards 2017

Steven Spurrier was one of the wine trade’s most influential figures. Over the years, he took the role of wine merchant, buyer, wine educator and lecturer; he wrote books, wine courses and over 300 columns for Decanter magazine. He also set up the breakthrough ‘Judgement of Paris’ in 1976. This memoir reflects Steven’s life charting the incidents, adventures, ideas and discoveries that formed his wine journey. Along the way, he had the privilege not only to taste the finest wines but to judge them and work with the winemakers who created them. 

Hardback
Pages: 288
Published by Académie du Vin Library 2020

The pruning book that time forgot... René Lafon’s classic, provocative work on the Poussard pruning methodology, Changes to be made to Vine Pruning - is now available for the first time in English (with the original French text included as well). It’s arguably the most important, historical work on vine pruning and this beautiful, hardcover edition is now available through Ex Vinum publishing. The translation is fully annotated, with 120 footnotes and over 60 retouched photographs and illustrations. There’s also a foreword by François Dal, and an extensive introduction by Robert Walters that seeks to put the work into both historical and modern context.

To quote François Dal, France’s most respected vine pruning consultant, “This English translation by Robert Walters is a real gift, offered to all English speakers passionate about viticulture. By reading this book you will not only benefit from the beautiful and important knowledge that it has to offer, but you will also live through a moment in history and admire how, with the limited means of the time, brilliant growers and scientists used their instinct and insight to understand the functioning of our world.”

Lafon’s work was lost for the best part of 100 years until it was rediscovered in recent decades, subsequently playing a key role in the pruning revolution we are witnessing today. Remarkably, Lafon’s thought-provoking text remains as fresh and valid as it was when it was first written. It also remains controversial, completely undermining much modern thinking on wood disease. It’s a work that points to a new way of thinking about our interactions with the vine, and with nature in general.

Anyone with a genuine interest in vine pruning, viticulture, the challenges of wood disease in modern vineyards, or simply the history of viticulture, will want to read this enlightening, revolutionary, and thoroughly detailed text.

In the words of winemaker Randall Grahm, Andrew Jefford is “the most thoughtful person we have writing about wine”, so for many wine lovers, a new Jefford is the equivalent of the release of a new iPhone to Apple fanatics. 

In this beautiful and varied volume of essays, opinions and articles spanning 2007 to 2022, the author shares his fascinating observations gathered over decades of discovery. Jefford listened to and admires wine, wherever it comes from; old-school pretensions are turned on their heads, style points are disdained, stellar prices are dismissed and questions are asked... 

The book includes an edited copy of Andrew’s transcendental lecture to the Wine Communicators of Australia in May 2012: Wine and Astonishment. The aim of this, Jefford writes, “is to make wine strange for us again, and in so doing to freshen or re-make our mental relationship with it”. There is no other book on wine like it, except perhaps, one of the author’s previous works.

How to Drink Australian is the modern wine book that Australia (and a world of wine drinkers) has been waiting for. Authors Jane Lopes and Jonathan Ross will be well known to our audience, not least through their days at Attica and The Rockpool Group, respectively. Since relocating to Nashville, they have established a successful import and education business—Legend—focused on changing the prevailing attitudes towards Australian wines in the States (where the big players control an overwhelming piece of the pie). Years in the making—and you’ll quickly find out why when you have a copy in your hands—How to Drink Australian is the most important book written on our country’s wines and wine culture in a long time. Set across 500 pages, and with telling collaborations from Kavita Faiella, Mike Bennie and Hannah Day, Jane and Jon have woven together a perceptive analysis of every significant wine region, bespoke illustrations and artwork, and hundreds of producer profiles. At the same time, Martin von Wyss’s gorgeously meticulous maps are second to none, and the photography is superb. Put simply, Lopes and Ross have knocked it out of the park.

This is a remarkably detailed and comprehensive survey of Australia’s contemporary wine scene—everyone and anyone in the wine trade owes it to themselves to own a copy.

If you are into the anniversary gifting scene, traditionally it is tin or aluminium that is intended to commemorate the 10th milestone. Both are known for their inability to rust, and so it is with Noble Rot Magazine. Although gold might be a better fit in this case? To quote editor Dan Keeling, “from the first issue of Noble Rot, published in February [of 2013], we’ve been riding the tidal wave of change that’s been sweeping wine culture and, holy Hermitage, it’s been fun.” Of that, there can be little doubt. So, Issue 31 is a celebratory issue and a rollicking one at that. A decade’s worth of reflection, it's packed with the usual articulate contributions from a typically illustrious cast of crazy diamonds. Kicking the celebrations off is Marina Hyde, a columnist who epitomises the phrase, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. Marina O’Loughlin then offers an engaging narrative on the most influential restaurants of the decade and Mike D charts falling in love with Burgundy during the early days of The Beastie Boys in ‘The Hip Hop Burgundy Wine Cult’. 

William Kelley, Jancis Robinson and Alice Feiring are amongst a merry cast of writers reflecting on some of the wines that brought them joy over the last ten years—choices then tasted and given the seal of approval by, wait for it, The Chemical Brothers. Only in Noble Rot! Kate Spicer looks back on ten years of Noble Rot Sessions and assesses, “What We’ve Learnt About Humanity from a Decade of Noble Rot interviews” while Jay McInerney celebrates 60 years of Paul Draper’s Ridge Vineyards and Keira Knightley writes eloquently about her favourite meal. Then there are feature articles on Chassagne-Montrachet, Priorat, Oslavian Ribolla, wine auctions, digestifs, and the much-loved and missed wine importer Becky Wasserman-Hone. All up, a don’t-miss issue that is rot-to-trot.

An expertly curated collection of essays written over 50 years between 1971 and 2021, On California captures the essence of the state’s spectacular wine country. Across 39 articles by 35 authors, it delves into the hopes, fears and dreams of the 18th-century pioneers who first shaped it, and what motivates 21st-century visionaries who currently pave the way. It charts the triumph over phylloxera and Prohibition, the mighty influence of the Pacific, and the plus points of a seismic hot zone. Then how, at the whim of one modest English wine merchant, a simple blind tasting in 1976 made the world sit up and notice the wines this extraordinary region was creating. 

California wine boffins, whizz-kids and scientists tell their stories on its pages—some via precious archive material, others through their thoughts mid-pandemic. We particularly enjoyed the articles from William Kelley (“Nowhere has the definition of ripeness been explored more thoroughly, or pushed to greater extremes, than in California’s Napa Valley”) and Randall Grahm’s penetrating essay on sustainability and a future made uncertain by climate change. But between the covers there is no dead weight.

The book includes contributions from Randall Grahm, Gerald Asher, Steven Spurrier, Paul Draper, Warren Winiarski, Dr William Kelley, Jane Anson, Elaine Chukan Brown, Karen MacNeil, Esther Mobley, Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, Liz Thach MW and Kelli White, Hugh Johnson and Fiona Morrison MW, Harry Waugh, Harry Eyres, Adam Lechmere, Brian St Pierre and Natasha Hughes MW.

On Champagne brings together a compendium of thoughts, opinions and conclusions of the world’s finest Champagne writers under a single roof. Eight sections divide 41 essays into themes including the brands, styles, history (the ‘Eleven eras of champagne’), terroir, innovation and future (from Sherman tanks to spaceships). Complied and edited by the richly talented Susan Keevil, the essays—written between 1882 and 2022—weave together a tapestry of tales presenting the reader with a vivid and multi-layered collage of the region. 

It’s a journey that starts and ends with capturing that sparkle in a bottle and, along the way, tutors us with the nuances of its chalky terrain, the determination of rebels from Ambonnay to Avize, and the mystery of a Champagne cellar under the sea. We meet the pioneers who created the great Champagnes of the past and the personalities who are greening this landscape, nurturing it through climate change to shape the exquisite Champagnes of the future. Bringing levity, the compendium’s heavyweight narrative is punctuated by historical essays such as Evelyn Waugh’s Fizz, Bubbly, Pop in the Swinging Sixties (“Gruesome attempts have been made in New Jersey to produce an equivalent”). Simply, On Champagne is an essential volume for every Champagne lover’s bookshelf.

Contributors include Tom Stevenson, Essi Avellan MW, Hugh Johnson, Serena Sutcliffe MW, Peter Liem, Tyson Stelzer, Andrew Jefford and Robert Walters, with the ‘modern era’ welcomed in by Evelyn Waugh. 

Simonit&Sirch’s Spurred Cordon Methodology for spur-pruned vines is the companion manual to Marco Simonit and Pierpaolo Sirch’s indispensable seminal guide to Guyot pruning.
First published in Italian in 2016, the English translation boasts more than 400 images and covers every step for professional or amateur pruners to follow to achieve optimum balance and longevity in their vines.
The efficacy of Simonit&Sirch's pruning methodology is backed by robust scientific theory and extensive testing in vineyards across the globe. These guides offers clear step-by-step instructions for pruning vines to maximise vine health and minimise wood disease, from correct establishment to late maturity.