If the reader is looking for a book that provides detail on the techniques, climate challenges and the resulting styles of wine then I can only say that this is the one. The technical detail is aimed at the layman and provides some wonderful relatively unbiased views of the techniques used throughout the world.
To love wine is very much to love a consumable that it so very different from one area (field) to another and yet is essentially the same. In that sense this book managed to rekindle my willingness to explore New World wines - something I had personally stopped bothering with because I felt they were nothing but big bold crass statements of ripeness. I may have been unfair.
For those that sit on the other side of the fence and believe that the Old World wines are nothing but vegetal overpriced hock, then I hope the book will have the same effect.
It is a well written books, with a loose structure that may infuriate the reader at first. I really do recommend sitting down and reading like a novel. None of the details here are new (all can be found in the Cambridge Wine Companion - CWC). What is different here is that unlike the CWC the reader is guided from one subject to another rather than having to randomly find their way through - not that the CWC is anything but a brilliant wine reference bible.
The writing here is a little dry on occasion (and of course there is not enough on the Rhone - there never is), but it is none the less a book that ranks amongst the most well thumbed in my wine library.