Preface

This revision is by far the most thorough there has ever been to The Oxford Companion to Wine. Every single entry has been subjected to intense scrutiny.

It is quite a responsibility to be in charge of a work that I know from personal experience occupies a very special place in the lives of wine lovers and wine students all over the world. Interest in wine, both its consumption and its production, has never been greater, which means that the world of wine has never been as extensive, nor as fast-changing. All of this means that it is very, very different from the wine world described in the third edition of this Companion, published in 2006.