A Tale of Two Wine Guides

Margaret Rand, general editor. Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book 2026. Mitchel Beazley, 2025.

Rose Murray Brown MW. A Taste for Wine: a new tasting masterclass for wine lovers. Mitchel Beazley, 2025.

Two new wine guides arrived at the Wine Economist mailbox recently, both published by Mitchel Beazley. They both take a very broad view of the world of wine and address some of the same topics and questions, but do so in very different ways. “There are no one-liners in wine,” as Jon Fredrikson says, so there’s probably not a single clear path to guiding readers through the world of wine.

Herewith a brief comparison of the two new books to help you think about the different ways that guides can approach wine and, perhaps, to help you consider what you might want from a book like this.

Compare and Contrast

• The first difference is obvious: the Hugh Johnson guide is small (about the size of two or three smartphones stacked on top of each other) and densely packed with information with very small but clearly readable text. A Taste for Wine’s format is about twice as large, the pages have a relaxed feel with lots of colorful illustrations. Hugh Johnson’s vibe is “dive deep,” while Taste for Wine feels more “take a look around.”

• Taste for Wine is brand new this year. After initially wondering if the world really needed another wine book, she decided to write this one to put her own personal stamp on wine education. The Hugh Johnson guide, on the other hand, has been updated almost every year since it first appeared in 1977. It is now a team effort with Margaret Rand leading more than 30 area-specialist wine writer contributors.

• Both books provide information about wine grape varieties and wine-food pairing suggestions. Both present surveys of global wine regions, too, but there is a big difference in depth of analysis. Taste of Wine provides two-page introductions to each region with illustrations, basic facts, and a brief list of suggested wines plus, in a separate section, a list of the author’s picks of the best wineries to visit. The list just gives names, not detailed explanations, but that might be enough to get the reader digging deeper on the internet.

• The core of the Hugh Johnson book is in the chapters on the main wine-producing countries. France and the United States are divided into the main regions and states respectively. Other countries such as Italy have one long alphabetical list of thumbnail descriptions of wineries, regions, and grape varieties. Smaller countries and U.S. states have short descriptions. This organization allows the book to pack in lots of information, but I have never warmed up to the alphabetical approach since I tend to think of wine in regional terms, so I’d put all the wineries from Alto Adige together, for example.  I imagine that this organization evolved as the number of wineries and regions grew and grew over the years. I might be happier with fewer wineries in each list with more detail on each, but the depth vs. breadth trade-off is impossible to solve to everyone’s satisfaction.

• A Taste for Wine’s largest sections are, naturally, devoted to wine tasting itself. Rose Murray Brown hopes that the book will make wine less complex and more approachable. Simplify without dumbing down. She illustrates many of her points through 10 wine tasting flights that readers are encouraged to replicate. Each element of wine tasting is indeed explained in easy-to-understand terms. It is not Brown’s fault that there are many elements to consider, so the complexity problem is difficult to overcome. I suspect her readers, seeing the “masterclass” reference in the subtitle, will be up for the challenge.

• One thing I like about A Taste for Wine is the way it reminds me of Kevin Zraly’s classic Windows on the World wine course book, now in its 35th edition and still #1 in Amazon’s wine guide ratings. Both books are focused on providing readers with the practical knowledge they need to enjoy wine. I think that practical aspect explains why there is depth in the tasting sections, which apply every time you open a bottle of wine, versus the other sections that apply in specific situations. Give readers what they need to know to make a good beginning and then guide them to take the next steps.
• The basic structure of the Hugh Johnson guides does not change much from year to year, so I always look forward to the two sections that vary considerably from year to year. The early section on “12 Wines to Try in 2026” gives readers a chance to think about what’s new and interesting in the wine world. Always interesting. And there is a themed section at the back that changes every year. For 2026 the topic is the price of wine, how it is set, what it means, is wine good value? Interesting reading.
• So which book should you add to your bookshelf? I suppose the obvious answer (and the one that Mitchell Beazley probably hopes you will give) is both books since their strengths are so complementary. Personally, the opportunity to read both books makes me think about what a wine guide needs to be in 2026, especially given the many changes in the wine world today and the availability of so much information via the internet and apps. Thinking about your perfect wine guide is a useful project, but a dangerous one. Rose Murray Brown says it is what provoked her to write A Taste for Wine!