For over 25 years, Jose Penin has written about the wines and wine growers of Spain and in 1980 created Spain's first wine magazine Bouquet. As a freelance author today, he works for prominent Spanish media such as El Pais and Tiempo, as well as many culinary magazines. In 1990, he published "Guia Penin de los vinos de Espana" which has become the market leader in its field. His totally independent and honest opinions have decided the success or failure of the wines he tastes and year in year out the sommeliers world-wide check his views and criticisms. His system of marking wines is simple and straight forward and is the 100 point system favoured by Robert Parker. Spanish wines are rated with a system of evaluation which takes account of the purchase price and the quality hence the final equation is a favourable cost-performance ratio. There are over 6000 wines from over 2600 wineries. In the first 100 pages, Penin tackles 'everything that one should know about wine'. The next 1000 pages which form the main part of the book is the evaluation of the wines accompanied by illustrations of the wine labels and information about the address of the wine maker. In the appendix, there is an overview of the highest ranking wines and then the best evaluated wines by region.