Gifts: Wine books for the wine buff or aspiring sommelier on your list

These wine books are sure to fit someone on your list, from the aspiring sommelier to the merely curious. To wrap and put under the tree: a couple of serious reference works, a wine atlas that can also be purchased as an eBook, a guide to newly fashionable sherry and a couple of good reads. The most novel, though, is a Scratch & Sniff introduction to wine from a master sommelier who knows his stuff.

“The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert” by Richard Betts (Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $19.99)

A wine book your inner 3-year-old should enjoy. The author of “The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert” is Richard Betts, a master sommelier but no snob, whose Twitter feed boasts the motto “Wine is a grocery, not a luxury.” One night on a ski trip in Canada, he came up with the idea that what the world really needed was a scratch and sniff wine book. He liked the idea that such a book could be accessible and inclusive — and fun. “Scratch and sniff as an opening salvo holds a lot of appeal,” he says. “You can actually use it to teach people something. The end game is to help the reader discover the wines he or she will love.” Betts calls it mapping your desires.

“Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France” the 25^th anniversary edition by Kermit Lynch (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28)

Renowned Berkeley wine importer Kermit Lynch is celebrating the 25th anniversary edition of his “Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France.” The book, first published in 1988, is required reading for anybody interested in wine, particularly French wine, and the natural wine movement, which Lynch, in a way, helped jump-start some 30 years ago. In his 35 years in the business, Lynch has received the “Légion d’Honneur” from the French government and some pretty impressive reviews for “Adventures on the Wine Route” in its first edition. For this new one, he’s added an epilogue to bring readers up to date with changes in the wine scene — and with the histories of the winemakers and estates in the book, some of it happy, some of it sad. In his introduction to the 1988 edition, the late Richard Olney describes Lynch as “an old-fashioned bohemian who happened to possess a remarkable nose and palate.” A very good read.

“The New California Wine: A Guide to the Producers and Wines Behind a Revolution in Taste” by Jon Bonné (Ten Speed Press, $35)

Jon Bonné’s new book “The New California Wine” is a wonderful, engaging read with a cast of characters who think outside the box, care about sustainability and have a strong curiosity and work ethic. This is a new generation of California winemakers who aren’t hedge fund directors or dot-com entrepreneurs. If they want to buy a piece of land to plant a vineyard, it takes years to save up. Some are children of winemakers, others grew up in wine country and always wanted to do something with wine and still others are hard-core dreamers with an itch to make wine. Their wines can be classic or wildly experimental, definitely hands-on and most often made in small quantities. They tend to be lower in alcohol and more subtle in style than the wines that have garnered top scores in recent years. More important, they tend to be food-friendly too. (SIV)

“Sherry, Manzanilla & Montilla: A Guide to the Traditional Wines of Andalucía” by Pieter Liem and Jesús Barquin (Manutius. Available from www.sherryguide.net, $29.95)
Peter Liem, a wine writer based in Champagne, teamed up with Jesús Barquín, a professor of criminal law and a Spanish wine writer, to write the definitive guide to sherry as it was and as it is now. The Spanish wine is definitely having a moment, as sommeliers, bartenders and wine buffs rediscover its pleasures. The well-researched book discusses sherry’s origins, why it is sometimes called “sack,” the history of the important bodegas, how the solera system works and what flor has to do with the qualities in the wine. “Sherry, Manzanilla & Montilla” is a gift that will nudge your favorite wine lover into exploring a region that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves for the fascinating wine called sherry.

“The World Atlas of Wine, Seventh Edition” by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson (Mitchell Beazley, $55)

British wine writer Hugh Johnson’s “The World Atlas of Wine” has long been every wine lover’s bible. Johnson is an erudite and engaging writer, pouring decades of wine knowledge into succinct paragraphs that place each country and region in context. And the brilliantly detailed maps have been essential to understanding why certain vineyards and appellations produce the wines that they do. For the last few editions Johnson has been joined by another stellar wine writer, Jancis Robinson. The two have just signed off on the seventh edition of “The World Atlas of Wine.” It’s also available in an e-book format for the iPad. Of course, the world of wine today is very different from when the book was first published in 1971. There are now about 215 maps, including those for coastal Croatia, Swartland in South Africa, northern Virginia — and Ningxia in China.

“Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, Including Their Origins and Flavours” by Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding and José Vouillamoz (Ecco, $175)

If you’re planning on heading to the nearest bookshop to snatch a copy of British wine writer and Financial Times columnist Jancis Robinson’s “Wine Grapes” as a gift for an oenophile friend, you’ll need a little red wagon. Or a sherpa. The massive (and quite definitive) tome weighs in at more than 6½ pounds on my bathroom scale. But its 1,280 pages include everything any wine lover will need to stump opponents in wine trivia games, ace the Master Sommelier test and exponentially increase his or her knowledge of ampelography (the field of botany concerned with the identification and classification of grapevines). Written with Master of Wine Julia Harding and grape DNA profiling expert José Vouillamoz, the book covers some 1,368 grape varieties. Cabernet Sauvignon gets some nine pages, Pinot Noir even more, including a Pinot Pedigree Chart to study.

“A Carafe of Red” by Gerald Asher (University of California Press, $21.95, paperback)

A collection of pieces Asher wrote mostly in the early ‘90s for Gourmet magazine, back in the day when magazines had the space and the will to publish long-form writing on wine. The stories in “A Carafe of Red” read as they were published, with an update at the end. A wonderful prose stylist, Asher found in wine that “the more I read, the more I traveled, and the more questions I asked, the further I was pulled into the realms of history and economics, politics, literature, food, community, and all else that affects the way we live. Wine, I found, draws on everything and leads everywhere.” Amen. Forget scores. His wide-ranging, astute appreciation is where it’s at. “A Carafe of Red” offers a window into what this wine writer — and yes, connoisseur, in the best sense — holds dear. And I do envy him his adventures on the wine roads.
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