About the Authors

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. His 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.

Jancis Robinson
Voted world’s most influential wine critic in polls in the US, France and internationally in 2018, Jancis views herself as a wine writer rather than a wine critic. She writes daily for JancisRobinson.com (voted first-ever Wine Website of the Year in the Louis Roederer International Wine Writers Awards 2010), weekly for the Financial Times, and bi-monthly for a column that is syndicated around the world. Her most recent book is also her shortest, a practical guide to the essentials of wine, The 24-Hour Wine Expert. She is editor of The Oxford Companion to Wine, co-author with Hugh Johnson of The World Atlas of Wine and co-author of Wine Grapes – A complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavours, each of these books recognised as a standard reference worldwide.

She travels all over the world to conduct wine events – often for the global literacy initiative Room to Read – and act as a wine judge. In 1984 she was the first person outside the wine trade to pass the rigorous Master of Wine exams and in 2003 she was awarded an OBE by Her Majesty the Queen, on whose cellar she now advises. In one week in April 2016 she was presented with France’s Officier du Mérite Agricole, the German VDP’s highest honour and, in the US, her fourth James Beard Award. She loves and lives for wine in all its glorious diversity, generally favouring balance and subtlety over sheer mass.