Books
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.
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I just bought this. Looking forward to reading it.
So is Amazon the best place to buy it?
I bought it from amazon, but they never delivered it. I ended up cancelling the order. Then I was going to buy it from Ultimo but they have sold out. So it is bloody hard to get
Yep, I had a load of problems getting it locally. Try the UK store for some reason the shipping is much faster and orders turn up when they are supposed to. It costs a bit more however.
Anthony, sorry to hear you were stuffed around. Did you buy from the US or UK site? you can borrow mine if you want.
I have seen it at Readings and Boarders for $120…( there is one copy at the melbourne central Boarders actually)
The US Site. I might have to borrow it from you if that’s ok.
Any collection on Spanish wines would not be complete without Julian Jeffs seminal work, The Wines of Spain. Between Radford and Jeffs, there isn’t much left to cover.
Although if you’re planning a trip, the Penin Guide to Spanish Wine should be in the stack of Michelin road maps.