Gift books for wine lovers

Apart from wine itself — always a great option — what makes a great wine gift?

Wine books remain my favorite gifts of all. They won't break, don't need recharging, and since the books recommended here have only recently been released, the odds are that your wine-geek friend won't already have purchased them. Some are portable, some are encyclopedic, some are just pure fun. Here are my favorites:

"Oz Clarke's Pocket Wine Guide 2007," (Webster's Time Warner Books, $14, www.ozclarke.com): The number of annually-updated, pocket-size wine guides continues to expand, but for those seeking just one, all-purpose, cover-the-world handbook, this is the one to get. Oz Clarke and a hand-picked group of regional contributors (including Seattle's Dan McCarthy) manage to pack an incredible amount of information into the book's 344 pages.

It's far more than just a guide to individual wines and wineries, though it certainly gets a gold star there. You'll find tips on matching wines to food; mini-essays on grapes, appellations and wine styles; vintage charts and much more. But best of all is Clarke's sense that wine, as he writes, "should taste of somewhere." He most enjoys, he admits, "real wine, unsophisticated, unprocessed, unhomogenized." Bravo!

"Wine Report 2007," by Tom Stevenson (DK Press, $15, www.dk.com):This thick pocket guide covers the other end of the wine spectrum, offering topical news and Top Ten lists rather than wine education and tasting notes. As such, it makes a perfect companion to Oz Clarke's work. Stevenson, the author of "The New Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia," has assembled his own team of regional specialists (full disclosure — I am one). Each correspondent annually reports on the latest news, trends both good and bad, business developments and personnel changes for his or her territory.

The heart of each regional report is a series of Top Ten lists recommending the greatest producers, fastest-improving producers, up-and-coming producers, greatest value producers and the best and most unusual wines. It offers a true insider perspective on every corner of the winemaking world.

"The Cork Jester's Guide To Wine, An Entertaining Companion for Tasting It, Ordering It and Enjoying It," by Jennifer Rosen (Clerisy/Emmis Books, $15, www.corkjester.com):Rosen, who calls herself the Cork Jester, is certainly one of the most entertaining — albeit wacky — wine writers to emerge in the U.S. in recent years. Her stream-of-consciousness, pun-filled essays manage to expand the wine columnist's beat to include observations on such things as travel, sex, dating, single parenting and the art of trapeze. She may wander, but she does so purposefully, always wrapping her wry observations around a wine theme.

This chuckle-filled book is a guide to wine in the broadest sense; it has been arranged into topical sections with useful-sounding titles such as "Tasting" and "Labels." But the real pleasure lies in Rosen's manic verbal skills and her irreverent, occasionally forensic approach to studying wine.

The "bite-size stories" she offers us are, she claims, "Trojan horses filled with facts programmed to infiltrate and lodge in your brain, with no effort at all on your part." Whether they lodge successfully is less important than the great fun you will have dislodging them from the pages of this guide.

"Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass," by Natalie MacLean (Bloomsbury, $24, www.nataliemaclean.com):Natalie MacLean is to Jennifer Rosen what Ed McMahon was to Johnny. She is unfailingly upbeat, a natural-born cheerleader, and she tackles the subject of wine with unbridled enthusiasm. She calls her work participatory journalism, and reading about her adventures in the wine trade is like cozying up with a friend's diary. This is a book that will be particularly enjoyed by women, for it puts a female perspective on an industry that was almost entirely male-dominated up until the last decade.

Some readers may find the relentless first person accounts a bit breathless, the revelations less than earth-shattering. But wine is a complex subject that can be approached in myriad ways, and MacLean's breezy take on such weighty matters as wine ratings, biodynamic viticulture and choosing the proper stemware will strike just the right tone for those who are beginning to explore its many dimensions.

"At Home in the Vineyard: Cultivating a Winery, an Industry, and a Life," by Susan Sokol Blosser (University of California Press, $25, www.ucpress.edu):"I set out to write a history of the Oregon wine industry," Susan Sokol Blosser explains, "but I realized that the only story I could tell was my own." That turns out to be quite a good one, for she and her husband, Bill, were among the very first to settle on Yamhill County as a fine place to grow wine grapes. Sokol Blosser winery remains a leader today in "green" viticulture, and the author, though she tells the story quite modestly, belongs on anyone's top-10 list of women who pioneered their way into the wine industry in the early decades of this country's wine renaissance.

For anyone contemplating a life in the vineyard, this book is part manual, part cautionary tale, but always upbeat and ultimately inspiring.

"A Wine Miscellany: A Jaunt through the Whimsical World of Wine," by Graham Harding (Clarkson Potter Publishers, $17, www.clarksonpotter.com):Graham Harding's name is not likely to ring any bells for even the most fanatic wine hobbyist; he is chairman of the Oxford Wine Club. To my knowledge, this is his first wine book. And what a delightful book it is. Subtitled "A Jaunt Through The Whimsical World of Wine," the book is a true miscellany, without chapters or any apparent organization at all. The entries, most quite short, many illustrated with clip art from the 19th century, run the gamut from useful statistics (Decanter's Top Ten List) to quirky marketing stories (Pansy! Rosé) to recipes (Marijuana wine) and odd moments in wine history (The Comet Vintage).

It can be picked up at a moment's notice, opened to any page and will most likely both surprise and delight you. For the wine geek who has everything, this is the book to buy.

"The Oxford Companion to Wine Third Edition," edited by Jancis Robinson (Oxford University Press, $65): What is there to say about this indispensable tome that has not already been written? With almost 4,000 entries in its 800-plus pages, it is not a book that you are likely to keep by the bedside! But if you want the latest research and scientific data on virtually any facet of grape growing and wine making, you will find it here, written by experts and presented in rather dry but perfectly clear prose.

There are a smattering of photos, maps and graphs, but this is truly a text book — don't look for visual detail here. From "abboccato" (Italian for medium sweet) to "zymase" (a group of enzymes that convert sugars to alcohol) the Companion will not let you down when you are pursuing some esoteric or highly technical wine factoid. No wine library would be complete without it.

Paul Gregutt is the author

of "Northwest Wines." His column appears weekly in the Wine section.

He can be reached by e-mail at wine@seattletimes.com.