Which wine encyclopedia is better:Stevenson or Robinson?

I keep resolving to cut back on wine book purchases, leaving more money for wine, but in the event, tend to buy a copy of each encyclopedia as soon as it is released.

Which is better?

Oh, dear ... is Bordeaux better than Burgundy, or vica versa? These two tomes are really like chalk and cheese. I'll attempt to explain with this much too brief summary of each:

Tom Stevenson (I confess to not owning the latest edition): good comprehensive introductory essays with more than the basics on various aspects of the winemaking process from grape to bottle, plus cellaring etc. The chapters are then by country/region with intros covering history/development, soils, grapes, climate etc, maps and some stats, followed by a comprehensive run-down of appellations (or regions/sub-regions in New World) with specific rules and brief description (including some recommended producers) for each one. Then at the end there are various lists and glossaries.
Perhaps this is the choice if you want to analyse a label, trying to figure out where the wine comes from and why.

Jancis Robinson OC: This is an A-Z of almost every technical term, grape, wine country/region, history, philosophy and person (must have missed some out here) connected with wine. An entry may be as little as two lines, or may run to several pages. There are cross-references throughout so you can browse back and forth, and this helps with when trying to find an appellation for example, which isn't always easy to find - though there is a list of these at the back.
Perhaps this the choice if you want to check up on facts, or whether what someone asserts about something to do with wine is correct, or whether in fact he/she is b..lsh...ing


Both are possible to simply browse or dip in and out of. Support the poor beleaguered wine writers - buy them both, I say!
(Declaration of interest here - I know both people and have worked for both of them ....)

Jancis Robinson OC - I meant Oxford Companion - she is of course Jancis Robinson OBE!

I thought Robinson's tome was a bit sterile, given her gender and in-depth understanding - almost as if she commissioned it to be sold under her name. Few anecdotal sparks of life. (For example, she mentions Cote de Bourg as up and coming, but really offers no meaty underpinning as to why, while the changes there are actually profound.) And the book is far from complete, as I guess it has to be. But a handy reference and certainly worth having.

Neil Pendock said of the Sotherbys book

Author Tom Stevenson admits “frankly, I do not have the budget of a major revise” as is clear from his section on SA which has more schoolboy howlers than an annual subscription to the Beano.

Wikipedia, the people’s encyclopedia, is often criticized for the inaccuracies of its stories. Tom Stevenson gives you the same thing in hardcopy for R540.



His article is at http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/pendock/200 ... y-howlers/

[Robin Garr]

Which is better?

Oxford. No contest in my mind.

[David M. Bueker]

I thought Robinson's tome was a bit sterile, given her gender and in-depth understanding - almost as if she commissioned it to be sold under her name. Few anecdotal sparks of life. (For example, she mentions Cote de Bourg as up and coming, but really offers no meaty underpinning as to why, while the changes there are actually profound.) And the book is far from complete, as I guess it has to be. But a handy reference and certainly worth having.

Covert,

A couple of thoughs:

1) It's the Oxford Companion to Wine, not Jancis Robinson's personal thoughts on wine. It is designed to be a factual reference, not an opinionated guide.

2) The Oxford Companion is without question the most complete resource out there. I really don't understand your "far from complete" comment. It's as complete as you can get.

[Robin Garr]

Let's make it a poll!

Many thanks to everyone.

And, Wink, I'm sure I'll follow your advice. Although, since I own the 2001 edition of Stevenson, I may take Peter's warning to heart and wait for the next edition, planned for 2009.

I should note that the Oxford is online on the Purple Pages, easily searched, and updated by Jancis and her team on a fairly regular basis.

Again, thanks for the help. Regards, Bob

I thought Robinson's tome was a bit sterile, given her gender and in-depth understanding - almost as if she commissioned it to be sold under her name. Few anecdotal sparks of life. (For example, she mentions Cote de Bourg as up and coming, but really offers no meaty underpinning as to why, while the changes there are actually profound.) And the book is far from complete, as I guess it has to be. But a handy reference and certainly worth having.

Covert,

A couple of thoughs:

1) It's the Oxford Companion to Wine, not Jancis Robinson's personal thoughts on wine. It is designed to be a factual reference, not an opinionated guide.

2) The Oxford Companion is without question the most complete resource out there. I really don't understand your "far from complete" comment. It's as complete as you can get.

David,

There are facts and there are facts. I already gave one example. Not to give myself away, but what if someone came from Mars and wanted to know what Champagne was all about? The book would tell him about geography, grapes, manufacturing and history, but nothing of the human significance of the liquid, the connection with love, passion, etc. What does Champagne taste like? What makes it great? What about the expression of a great Champagne effects people to the degree of being willing to pay hundreds of dollars for it? In other words, I am interested in the meaning of things to humans, which can be addressed in a factual way. The way Champagne is treated in the book you could as well be reading about benzene. If this is too soft or goofy for you, I understand, and won't argue.

Covert

[David M. Bueker]

Covert,

It's not soft or goofy, but it's not what either reference book is intended to be. There are other books that are intended to do what you are saying.

Covert,

It's not soft or goofy, but it's not what either reference book is intended to be. There are other books that are intended to do what you are saying.

I'm sure you are right. Purchased the Complete Book of Bordeaux last night. Not sure what I expect from that one, but I guess I'll get what I get.

[Jenise]

I'm a fan of Jancis the woman and the Oxford Companion, and completely unfamiliar with Tom Stevenson's work except vaguely by reputation, so won't vote, but I understand Covert's position. Some topics are covered so exhaustively it's hard to quickly answer a question you may have, and some topics get short shrift if they're addressed at all. There was something I was looking about Italian wine awhile back that wasn't answered by Oxford, but I did find the answer in, of all things, Karen Macneil's Wine Bible, which is the Brittney Spears of wine reference books. Another time recently, a very small Loire region I had a bottle of wine from was not listed in Oxford, but was briefly described in the Larousse wine encyclopaedia--only one sentence, but it was the one sentence I needed. Point is, the Companion occasionally disappoints, wonderful indeed as it is.

Covert,

It's not soft or goofy, but it's not what either reference book is intended to be. There are other books that are intended to do what you are saying.

Stevenson's book on Champagne, for one.

I love the Companion.

Great point, Jenise. One reason I like to have more than one encyclopedia around the house. My best example, Stevenson had this reference two editions back:

[Often Trotte Vieille as in Duijker and Broadbent; named after an old woman who served her customers very quickly – the “galloping granny.”]

Granny wasn't in the OCW2d -- haven't checked the OCW3rd -- but that little entry cheered me up immensely for some reason.

I'm a fan of Jancis the woman and the Oxford Companion, and completely unfamiliar with Tom Stevenson's work except vaguely by reputation, so won't vote, but I understand Covert's position. Some topics are covered so exhaustively it's hard to quickly answer a question you may have, and some topics get short shrift if they're addressed at all. There was something I was looking about Italian wine awhile back that wasn't answered by Oxford, but I did find the answer in, of all things, Karen Macneil's Wine Bible, which is the Brittney Spears of wine reference books.

I think Karen is pretty serious, altough the book is obviously aimed at a less serious reader.

For most Italian wine questions you could do a lot worse than the Dummy's Guide, by Mary Ewing-Mulligan MW, very well done.

to what wink wrote, i'd like to add that i like the atlas-like aspect of tom's book. i also think it worth noting that if jancis or anyone else wrote every entry in her own book, there would be some wonderful howlers there too. if anyone finds a howler in anything tom has written on champagne or alsace i'd love to hear about it. in any event he does have a good palate and i like the 'go with' commentary on the various regions and producers in toms book. someone said the jancis book is dry - gosh yes; but not so stevensons.

[David M. Bueker]

Covert,

If you are looking to peer into the soul of wine then I heartily recommend Kermit Lynch's 'Adventures on the Wine Route.'

"Purchased the Complete Book of Bordeaux last night. Not sure what I expect from that one, but I guess I'll get what I get."

Covert, I really enjoyed The Complete Bordeaux: The Wines*The Chateaux*The People, by Stephen Brook. My review is online at Amazon; would love to exchange notes when you finish it; your knowledge of Bordeaux is so much broader and deeper than my own.

[Jenise]

I think Karen is pretty serious, altough the book is obviously aimed at a less serious reader.

Understood. And there's good reason for it to be the book every wine consultant in this area has at their desk instead of the Oxford Companion. They're often in the position of needing a quick answer to a question, and there the brevity is an asset. Why I bought it, too.

Why do I have a feeling of déjà vu?

As mentioned before, comparing these books is comparing apples to bicycles. They are different entities. Robinson is a series of articles with deep background on many related subjects. Stevenson is like a telephone directory where the entries are individual wines, plus occasional larger articles. I can grab Stevenson and find in the index an obscure subregion or producer, then brief notes about it in the text. In Robinson I can find some California wine history rarely mentioned in California. (In either book, incidentally, I can find the 1985 Austrian wine scandal and the basic press error that created the story. [Substantially a journalistic scandal, the actual wine scandal was a side story.] Which shows that journalists who today still resurrect the basic error made in that story's initial publicity have not checked either of these reference books, repeating the sort of inattention to fact checking that caused the whole 1985 mess.)

If budget's limited, buy the latest Robinson and a remaindered or used copy of Stevenson's previous edition (he updates it more often than she does). You may miss the latest new-world planting or cult winery, but the steady information will remain.

Max, they are updated about the same: Oxford 2d 1999; Oxford 3rd 2006; Sotheby 3rd 2001, Sotheby 4th 2006.

If you can spring for it, the Oxford is available onlne as part of the Purple Pages, and is updated as to major items on a as needed basis, and of course available to subscribers.

Actually Bob, I went by remembered lifetime revision history of each title, but on checking, even there you are right, by half a year per edition.

Robinson ["Oxford"], 12 years / 3 editions = 4 years average interval
Stevenson ["Sotheby"], 18 years / 4 editions = 4.5 years.

Edit: Actually, revision intervals are the more precise metric, and there they match (6-year average revision interval each).

Another way to contrast their styles is that the basic unit in Robinson is the article, like many encyclopedias: fraction of a page to a few pages, with many contributing writers. Stevenson's basic unit is an individual wine appellation, with a few column-centimeters at four columns per page, and an index entry. Total count circa ten thousand. (No wonder he doesn't re-check every detail each edition. In the areas I consult most -- France, Germany, California -- I've found Stevenson pretty accurate, other regional complaints upthread notwithstanding.)

I will say (1) I didn't spot nearly as much change in Stevenson as Robinson in the previous round of revisions (S. 2nd to 3rd compared with R. 1st to 2nd). And (2) I truly can't imagine relying on just one of the two, because I see little overlap. (Should you hold out stubbornly for Robinson I'd be obliged to send you one of my several used copies of Stevenson!)

Thanks, Max -- I actually have three different Oxfords, and four different Stevensons. Not counting the yearly Stevenson updates. Or the multiyear subscription to the Purple.

This thread was a half a****d effort to save a few bucks for wine.

As usual, it will probably fail.