Wine & Spirit is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 monthly magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 on wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

, spirit

Alcohol

In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....

s, beer

Beer

Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

s and cocktail

Cocktail

A cocktail is an alcoholic mixed drink that contains two or more ingredients—at least one of the ingredients must be a spirit.Cocktails were originally a mixture of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters. The word has come to mean almost any mixed drink that contains alcohol...

s, directed at both consumers and the drinks industry. The magazine also organises the annual "International Wine Challenge

International Wine Challenge

The International Wine Challenge is an annual wine competition. The International Wine Challenge assesses every wine blind and judges each for its faithfulness to variety, region and vintage. Every wine is assessed independently of its price...

" and "International Spirits Challenge", and publishes the annual results book, the World's Best Wines Guide.

Wine & Spirit is viewed as a competitor of Decanter

Decanter (magazine)

Decanter is an up market magazine on wine and spirits, published in over 90 countries on a monthly basis. The magazine content includes news from the industry, vintage guides and wine recommendations. Decanter organizes the annual Decanter World Wine Awards.-Wine Ratings:Decanter employs a 1 to 5...

, described by Jancis Robinson

Jancis Robinson

Jancis Mary Robinson OBE, MW is a British wine critic, journalist and editor of wine literature. She currently writes a weekly column for the Financial Times, and writes for her website jancisrobinson.com...

 as "Britain's second consumer wine magazine", though livelier.

History

The magazine was a consumer-only oriented magazine founded as What Wine? in 1983 by Robert Joseph and Charles Metcalfe and published by Wilmington plc. It was later renamed Wine Magazine, then Wine International, before it was sold with its sister trade-only publication Wine & Spirit (a 150 year old trade publication where Jancis Robinson

Jancis Robinson

Jancis Mary Robinson OBE, MW is a British wine critic, journalist and editor of wine literature. She currently writes a weekly column for the Financial Times, and writes for her website jancisrobinson.com...

 began her wine writing career as editor immediately after university) to William Reed Publishing in December 2005. The two magazines were combined into one, Wine & Spirit International, in February 2006.