'Tis the holiday season, when publishers bring out new wine books. Here are three I recommend for holiday gift-giving.

        • Red and White: Wine Made Simple (Wine Appreciation Guild; $25; 800-231-9463). This is an updated edition of a book that received rave reviews in Australia. There's an Aussie connection because author Max Allen fell in love with wine while vacationing Down Under and then moved there. Lacking knowledge of wine, he dove into learning with the single-mindedness of a blitzing linebacker.

        “I sold my possessions to buy wine books and ate baked beans so that I could afford good wine glasses,” Mr. Allen writes.

        This no-nonsense approach carries over to his writing. I particularly enjoyed his pronouncement that “wine is the best convenience food in the world. It's all there in the bottle. You don't have to heat it, or mix it with anything, or garnish it, or chop it up or bung it in a wok. All you have to do is pull the cork.”

        Red and White is beautifully illustrated with 154 pages and is suited for beginners and intermediates, though experts will enjoy the writing, too.

        • Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure (Broadway Books; $24). This is less a wine book than the story of the French people protecting wine — the soul of French culture — during World War II. Interesting, heretofore untold stories abound.

        For example, husband and wife authors Don and Petie Kladstrup describe the actions of young Francois Taittinger of the famous Taittinger Champagne house. When accused by the local weinfuhrer of sending inferior wines to Germany, Taittinger hotheadedly responded, “Who cares? It's not as if it's going to be drunk by people who know anything about champagne.”

        That remark earned him time in jail, in the company of several other champagne producers.

        Also, there is an all-too-brief mention of a heroic German soldier who sabotaged the detonators that the Nazis planned to use to blow up the port of Bordeaux as they retreated after the D-Day invasion.

        The book extends to the post-war period, and the treatment of Nazi collaborators is sure to raise long-buried issues among the French people today.

        Disappointingly illustrated, with 279 pages, this book is recommended for wine novices and experts, especially those who are interested in history, culture and extraordinary actions of ordinary people.

        • The Global Encyclopedia of Wine (Wine Appreciation Guild; $75, 800-231-9463). Although more of a geographic atlas than an A-to-Z encyclopedia, the geographic coverage is indeed encyclopedic. Editor Peter Forrestal gathered 36 of the world's best wine minds and let them roam the globe, producing 912 oversized pages and an interactive CD-ROM.

        All the usual suspects are here, including Europe, Australia and the United States, but there's also coverage of Africa, the Middle East and mainland Asia, including individual sections on countries whose names have become more familiar to Americans: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. That's thorough coverage.

        Abundantly illustrated with attractive, useful photographs and maps, it's highly recommended for experts and enthusiastic intermediates, especially those with a geographic bent.

       Contact John Vankat by mail: c/o Cincinnati Enquirer; fax: 768-8330.

'Oceans' of holiday movies
Cancer research needs another 'Brian's Song'
An all-American cookie maker
DEMALINE: The arts
Stoltzman's sure hands make clarinet sparkle
DAUGHERTY: Everyday
Frame makers' sale picture of success
KENDRICK: Alive and well
Prize Possessions
Writing adds up for author-accountant
Call ahead to customize meal at Daveed's
Put three reads under your tree
Get to it