Jose Vouillamoz, who worked with Professor Carole Meredith and the ground-breaking team of grape geneticists at the University of California at Davis, is a botanist and grape geneticist with an international reputation and is currently based in his native Switzerland.

He has discovered numerous unexpected relationships between grape varieties, many of which are exclusive to this book.

Jancis Robinson is one of the world's best-known wine writers. In 1984 she was the first person outside the wine trade to qualify as a Master of Wine.

The Financial Times wine writer, she is the author/editor of dozens of wine books, including two of the most respected and garlanded, The Oxford Companion to Wine (OUP) and The World Atlas of Wine (Mitchell Beazley). She is widely regarded by the wine-drinking public as an authority on vine varieties.

Her award-winning website has subscribers in 100 countries.

Julia Harding passed the notoriously stiff Master of Wine exams at the first attempt, the top student of her year.

She is Jancis Robinson's full-time researcher, co-ordinator and associate palate.

In this book she has gathered the most up-to-date statistics about wine- grape plantings in every corner of the planet as well as unearthing recommended wine producers for almost every variety.