This one is for all the visual learners. Every time I’ve brought this book with me to a tasting, someone wants to buy it. We all learn differently, and this book, with its incredibly thorough research and maps by wine industry icons Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson, is one of the broadest and deepest resources for wine maps all over the world.

An example scenario: you’re hosting a Wineluck Club tasting on French Whites, and you’re trying to explain that in France, wines are labeled by region, rather than variety. Wouldn’t it be easier to just show your guests where those regions are by pointing to a map as you speak? Chablis is over here, up north, closer to Champagne than Burgundy’s Côte d’Or, which is why the wines from there tend to be more restrained than Burgundian Chardonnay, since grapes won’t get as ripe when the climate is cooler…you get the picture. Or the visual, so to speak.