The 5th edition of the World Atlas Wine by Hugh Johnson and me was published in English on a singularly inauspicious day, 12 September 2001, by Mitchell Beazley in both Britain and the United States. In both countries sales have been much higher than expected, and McArthur of Canada who also published last autumn, have also done amazingly well with the book, presumably thanks to Kim McArthur's unfair energy quotient. Sales in New Zealand and, especially, Australia are much more modest, but then I suppose those countries are not great importers of the wines of the world.
One year on, and the book has now been translated into 12 more languages and is being published as below. I write this, for example, on a TGV from Paris bound for a bookshop and wine dinner in Nantes. Hugh and I tried to get in a Nantais mood in the seafood restaurant at the Gare Montparnasse by ordering oysters (quite delicious) and a half bottle of Muscadet (1999 and way past it, alas).
The Atlas will be published in the following countries between September and November 2002 (the name of the publisher is in brackets).
- France (Flammarion)
- Italy (Arnoldo Mondadori)
- Germany (Hallwag – Graefe & Unzer)
- Russia (BBPG)
- Hungary (Park Kiado)
- Poland (Warsaw Investor's Group – WIG)
- Czech (Fortuna)
- Japan (Sancho Shuppan)
- Norway (Schibsteds)
- Denmark (Lindhardt & Ringhof)
- Finland (Tammi)
- Holland (Uitgeverij Het Spectrum)