The New Spain - John Radford

If you are looking for an overview of Spanish wine, this book is a good start. Well written and easy to read, this is a good coffee-table style reference to the contemporary wines of Spain.  Lots of pictures, background to many of the regions, the varieties, wine styles and a look at some of the personalities involved in the resurrection of Spanish wine over the past 20 or so years.  It's half way between a wine-geek bible for Spain and a picture book that is nice to flick through every now and then.

It is not an in-depth look at the wines themselves however. There are no tasting notes, and that would be my only real criticism.  Although much of the information in the book is widely available in other guides etc, what this book does really well is to provide an overview of the regions, the terms, the key producers to look out for and provides an overview of the emerging styles of wine being produced.  There are some great maps and photos included as well.  You get a good idea as to how big wine is in Spain, i.e how small Rioja and Ribera del Duero are in terms of the total production.  As with many of the books on Spanish wine, only a handful of the producers listed have distribution in Australia; you should be able to find many of the big names at a quality booze shop or e-tailer. 

Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone with an interest in wine, it's well produced and has just the right level of geekiness.  If you are looking to buy this book, shop around.  I've seen it for $120 in local bookshops, while it is about $50 from Amazon.

Penin Guide to Spanish Wine (2006)

This is an invaluable guide for anyone with an interest in Spanish wine.  For many years this guide was available only in Spanish, but it has been published in english since 2005.  You could equate this guide to the popular Australian guides by James Haliday or Jeremy Oliver. 

It is two books really, the first section is almost 200 pages on the varities, wine styles, soil types, climate, tips for the beginner and even a section on how to tell if you are wine wanker.

The remaining 800 odd pages are devoted to tasting notes from just about every region of Spain plus the growing Vinos de Tierra.  Penin uses the 100 point scale, with scores bellow 80 making it into the book (there are scores as low as 56!).  There are translation artifacts and oddities in some reviews, but they don't really take much away from the overall experience.  Another bonus is the contact details and web sites for most of the producers. 

Overall, a very well put together wine guide and a handy reference for about $40.  As far as I know, it is not available in Australia at present, Amazon seems to be the best source for it (just make sure you order the english version!).