Here's cheers to wine guides

As well as being extremely useful, wine guides are great stocking fillers. DITA DE BONI samples a few.

As wine doyen Vic Williams rightly points out in his new season's guide, buying local wine has never been so complicated, with almost 400 New Zealand wineries hawking their wares on the domestic market.

For people who like a good New Zealand-made wine but are bewildered by the selection, Christmas 2001 throws up a plethora of books on the subject, most of which cut a swathe through the sometimes obscure descriptions that winemakers give their product. The best guides (usually annually updated versions of standard wine "bibles") give a simple analysis of each wine's quality, approximate cost and value for money. Even better, most are cheap enough - and small enough - to make handy stocking fillers.

But which wine guide to choose? To make decisions easier Life got its hands on a selection of the best wine guides and, as a service for the festive season, asked Paul Tudor, owner of mail order wine book seller Basket Press, to weigh in with an "expert opinion" on his favourites. While enthusiastic about this year's collection, he warns that wine guides in general - especially in a country with small production runs such as New Zealand - can go out of date quickly, and that rarer wines can "disappear"by the time the books hit the shelf.

But general guidance is still invaluable. Vic Williams' The Penguin Good New Zealand Wine Guide (Penguin, $29.95), is a mid-sized soft-cover book that scores big points for ease-of-reading. And his exhortation that "there ARE no rules" is a refreshingly honest take on the art of matching food and wine.

Starting with a rundown of the year's vintage, and a list of his best, Williams gives succinct description of wines in each category, complete with quality and value ratings and cellaring suggestions. The descriptions are delicious, with colourful phrases such as "ripe mango aromas" and "all ginger and lychees" rounding out his notes beautifully. One of this reporter's favourites, Palliser Estate Chardonnay, earned this review: "Citrus and stonefruit aromas dominate the bouquet, despite the time in oak. It boasts mouthfilling texture and nicely layered peaches and cream flavours, with smartly integrated acids adding life to the finish." Food recommendations accompany each wine.

Another longstanding wine authority, Michael Cooper, has updated his classic Pocket Guide to Wines of New Zealand (Mitchell Beazley/Reed, $24.95) - a more compact guide to local product, both in size and content. Cooper begins his book with a section on the history of New Zealand wine from 1836 to the present, and then profiles by region. His style takes readers beyond the product, looking at production, marketing and regional variation and giving an overview of the industry. Around 250 wineries are included, with ratings averaged out from his many years in the tastings game. Tudor says the Pocket Guide is "perhaps the most useful beginner's guide" to New Zealand wine - Cooper does not focus on individual vintages/bottlings, but rather gives a general impression of the producer and the styles of wine they aspire to. "This is the guide book that I always recommend to overseas people interested in learning about New Zealand wine."

Displayed prominently in shops at this time of year, is Cooper's second wine book, Buyer's Guide to New Zealand Wines 2002 (Hodder Moa Beckett, $29.95). This annually updated guide has sold around 100,000 copies over 10 years. The style is concise and slightly drier than Williams', but impressive in range and breadth. Tudor calls the book "very influential, though it dates quickly".

If you really want to weigh down your intended's Santa stocking, you can top off the Cooper selection with an update of his pretty Classic Wines of New Zealand (HMB, $34.95) , a more picturesque look at the top quaffs.

The Herald's Viva wine critic Joelle Thomson returns with her reader-friendly Under $15 Wine Guide 2001/02 (New Holland Publishing, $15), a handy reference in a market where huge sales are made through supermarkets. She tops her selection with 101 Wine Tips, containing information on everything from removing wine stains to the meanings of terroir (the flavour that soil, climate and topography gives to a wine) and oxidation (wine spoiled by exposure to too much oxygen), in a pocket-sized book retailing for $9.99.

However, the Liquorland Top 100 Pocket Wine Guide (David Bateman, $14.95) really is the smallest guide on the market, measuring just 9 cm by 14 cm - a great size to slip into your purse. Primarily for the wine-buying amateur, the 950 wines reviewed include notes from the Liquorland Top 100 International Wine Competition, which pitches local and international wines against each other and is judged by industry luminaries including Bob Campbell and Michael Cooper.

Two other wine guides worth mentioning from earlier this year - harder to find but still considered indispensable - include A Guide to New Zealand Wine 2001 by Peter Saunders (Clarity Publishing, $29.95) which, according to Tudor, is a book that "pulls no punches [and] is more than just a buyer's guide, providing interesting insights into, and useful commentary on, almost every local wine producer." Also, the Cuisine Annual 2001 "contains interesting information for beginner and expert alike", he says. The Cuisine Annual has not been reissued for the 2001/02 year (a few 2000/01 copies can be found) but the company says it will be revamping the guide for publication in August 2002.

Not guides exactly, but looking to capture the drinking aesthete is Taste of the Earth - Creating New Zealand's Fine Wine by wine writer Keith Stewart (Craig Potton Publishing, $49.95), a picturesque profile of his top 15 wineries in New Zealand and the people and stories behind them. Featuring the vivid photography of Kevin Judd, winemaker at Cloudy Bay, the book is "the sort of guidance I believe Kiwi wine fans deserve," says Tudor. Not to be outdone in the lushness stakes, Williams' and Julie Le Clerc's wine and food collaboration Vineyards of New Zealand Cookbook (Penguin $69.95), which was produced after the duo spent eight months travelling around 70 of the country's top vineyards drinking the wine and sampling the local produce. It's a hard job, but someone had to do it, eh Vic?