The Story of Wine

Book excerpt: - The ultimate history of wine by the master of the subject, an award-winning bestseller for decades now in a new edition; - New foreword by historian Andrew Roberts - Full of fascinating vignettes and side stories, a book to be read for hours or dipped into - Beautifully produced in a new flexibound volume that makes it easy to read "Who better to supply us with our first comprehensive historical survey than the wine writer with the magic pen, Hugh Johnson?" - Jancis Robinson MW Hugh Johnson has led the literature of wine in many new directions over a 60-year career. His classic The Story of Wine is his most enthralling and enduring work, winner of every wine award in the UK and USA. It tells with wit, scholarship and humor how wine became the global phenomenon it is today, varying from mass-produced plonk to rare bottles fetching many thousands. It ranges from Noah to Napa, Pompeii to Prohibition to Pomerol, gripping, anecdotal, personal, controversial and fun. This new edition includes Hugh's view on the changes wine has seen in the past 30 years. In his Foreword the celebrated historian Andrew Roberts writes: The genius of The Story of Wine derives from the fact that it is emphatically not a dry-as-dust academic history - there are dozens of those - but an adventure story, full of mysteries, art and culture.