Hugh Johnson’’s Pocket Wine Book 2023

The brand-new edition of the unrivalled and bestselling annual, Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book.

The world’s best-selling annual wine guide.

＂This compact annual guide is packed with information and recommendations of top names from every wine region.＂ Decanter

Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book is the essential reference book for everyone who buys wine - in shops, restaurants, or on the internet. Now in its 46th year of publication, it has no rival as the comprehensive, up-to-the-minute annual guide.

This latest edition of Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book includes a color supplement: How Wine Ages (And Why), which covers questions such as whether aged wine is necessarily better wine and how to store wine to ensure it ages well.

It provides clear succinct facts and commentary on the wines, growers and wine regions of the whole world. It reveals which vintages to buy, which to drink and which to cellar, which growers to look for and why. Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book gives clear information on grape varieties, local specialties and how to match food with wines that will bring out the best in both.

Hugh Johnson is the world’s pre-eminent writer on wine. First published in 1977, his Pocket Wine Book sells hundreds of thousands of copies a year. Its winning formula of insight, critical appraisal of the world of wine, plus valuable vintage news and wine recommendations has been often-imitated but never bettered.

With the publication of his first book, Wine, Johnson established himself at the age of twenty-seven as the most refreshing and authoritative voice on the subject. During the past four decades he has written books that have become landmarks on the subject, including his classic The World Atlas of Wine, co-authored with Jancis Robinson, his Wine Companion, first published in 2003, The Story of Wine and Hugh Johnson on Wine.

In his spare time he writes about gardening from his home in London.

Margaret Rand has been general editor of Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book for some 15 years and now, with Hugh’s retirement, has taken over the hot seat. The book’s mix of personal insight and informed recommendations have made it the world’s best-selling annual wine book.

Margaret Rand’s curiosity about wine started several decades ago and led her to a career of writing about wine and editing wine magazines, with the occasional foray into whisky. Her books include Grapes & Wines and 101 Wines to Try Before You Die; she also writes regularly for The World of Fine Wine, timatkin.com and winesearcher.com. When she’s not writing about wine she’s probably walking, reading, or in the kitchen, cooking.