The book provides an alphabetically arranged reference to wine, compiled and edited by Jancis Robinson, with contributions by several wine writers including Hugh Johnson, Michael Broadbent, and James Halliday,[1] and experts such as viticulturist Richard Smart and oenologist Pascal Ribéreau-Gayon.

The fourth edition, published in 2015, contains nearly 4,104 entries[4] (300 of them completely new) over about 850 pages with contributions from 187 people.

David Williams in The Guardian, wrote that the new edition "offer[s] a snapshot of the more significant changes in wine in the past nine years.

"[5] Entries for individuals are limited by the strict criteria of "a long track record" and "global significance"; hence French worldwide consulting oenologist Michel Rolland and even former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev have entries, while California oenologist Helen Turley is omitted.

Eric Asimov of The New York Times has noted that with the wine world's increasing rate of evolution, "this encyclopedic work keeps pace with new information on issues like climate change, biodynamic viticulture and globalization, and emerging wine regions like Canada and eastern Europe.