My Round: If you're buying for a wine obsessive or just an enthusiastic drinker

There's a book out there that'll hit the spot

The biggest development in wine publishing this year sounds dead boring: the acquisition by Mitchell Beazley of Faber & Faber's backlist of wine books. Why so important? Because it confirmed the status of serious wine publishing as a micro-niche activity. The market for wine books, like the market for the bottles on which it's all based, is rapidly bifurcating along two clear paths. Path one: the great majority of people who don't give a damn what they drink as long as it tastes good, doesn't cost too much, and contains alcohol. Path two: the much smaller group – of which I know you are a member – that cares about origins, grape varieties and anything else that helps them drink more intelligently.

If they want anything at all, the first group – about whom I feel no anger, merely regret – will probably want a straightforward wine-buying guide. All have merits and demerits. I get most use out of Oz Clarke's Wine Buying Guide, Matthew Jukes's The Wine List, and the Which? Wine Guide and I wouldn't get into a fistfight about which is best. It's the second group of wine books that concerns me here – those which take a vinous topic and treat it in serious depth. Here's the quartet I've picked as my best of the year, any of which would make a great present for your favourite oenophile.

Of the year's original books, none is more eloquently argued or densely detailed than Andrew Jefford's The New France (£30, Mitchell Beazley, as if you didn't already know). This is a perfect meeting of subject and author. Fact one: France is the best wine producing nation on earth. Fact two: its future is threatened by market forces, internal disarray, regulations that sometimes do it no good and the fickleness (a charitable word) of consumers. Jefford addresses all the problems without ever losing sight of the underlying strengths of a country he knows and loves deeply. He makes a passionate plea for wines that reflect the unique qualities of a particular patch of earth, and argues – irrefutably, for my money – that France is the place where these unique products are most likely to be found. If this all sounds too metaphysical, there are extensive guides to producers and their wines, and lovely photographs. Oh, and he devotes a section of each chapter to dissing the region in question – no mere cheerleader Mr Jefford.

Another French themed book, and more straightforward: Paul Strang's Languedoc-Roussillon: the Wines & Winemakers (£25, ohmigod don't say it's Mitchell Beazley again). This is worth owning for three reasons. One: it's a traveller's dream in every sense except the physical, being too large to stuff in a pocket or even a handbag. Two: it evinces (like Jefford's book) passion and perseverance. Three: Languedoc-Roussillon is one of the best wine areas in the world for value, instant loveableness, innate virtue and undiscovered greatness. This book tells much if not all of the story. Sloppy copy-editing is an annoyance but not a deterrent.

Book three is a real oddball: Africa Uncorked: Travels in Extreme Wine Territory by John and Erica Platter (£19.99, and – pass the smelling salts – it's published by Kyle Cathie). Mr and Mrs Platter have travelled Africa seeking every conceivable and inconceivable place where vines are grown and wine is made. This is travelogueish rather than a pure-and-simple wine book, and none the worse for that. I loved the story of how foie gras came to Madagascar.

Book number four is not original to the palindromic year that's about to end, but 2002 will be memorable for its reappearance. Oz Clarke's Wine Atlas, first published in 1995, contains some of the most informative topographical wine-maps ever published. It is now in a new edition, published by (shock horror) Little, Brown at £40. The text is excellent. But those maps! They're the star of the show here, and worth the price of admission.