Clive Platman looks at some ideal festive gifts for wine-lovers.

Christmas comes early every year in the Platman household when a clutch of new-release wine books lands on my doorstep. This year has been no exception, with several hardy perennials and a couple of new publications to explore.

Both Oz Clarke and Hugh Johnson provide the ideal stocking-filler with their annual Pocket Wine Guides (£9.99 and £11.99 respectively).

Both have been published since time immemorial, with Oz’s first edition published 20 years ago, and Hugh’s as far back as 1977.

Both were a lot slimmer back then, but that reflects the enormous expansion of wine producers and regions over the same period.

The fascination of the world of wine is that it never stands still.

Each year, there are a host of up-and-coming producers, new wine discoveries and, of course, new vintages.

Thus, while the core of the mini-encyclopaedias remains the same, after two to three years they need updating.

The main section of Oz’s guide is an A-Z of producers, grapes and wine regions.

Where wine styles or varieties cross national borders, Oz may have the edge but, like Hugh, both are well on top of the best producers, with both listing personal favourites.

Overall, Oz scores well on his assessments and at under a tenner, it’s cracking value.

Hugh Johnson’s approach is more traditional, dividing the entries into wine countries. I cut my teeth on Hugh’s book and personally prefer his layout and rating system.

For me, it’s a lot more useful as a reference work, particularly for such classic areas as Bordeaux and, in the course of the year, is the more thumbed. Hugh gets the nod.

Oz Clarke’s 250 Best Wines 2012 is a companion piece to his pocket guide, and at some stage in the past was given away as a freebie.

Not so this year, but for £7.99 you get what it says on the tin, 250 wine recommendations.

So far so good, and this year Oz is going a little downmarket in these financially straitened times.

The inherent flaw of any guide giving specific bottle recommendations is that it’s almost out of date by its release in September and, when taken out of the Christmas stocking it’s positively obsolete.

In days past, many unhappy hours have been wasted in local supermarkets, searching for recommended bargains, only to find them deleted. Beware, too, that many of the budget wines have a short shelf-life, particularly rosé and cheap whites. Take my advice – buy a copy of the Decanter 2011 World Wine Awards (October edition) for £4.50.

My preference is for a reference that targets specific producers and 1000 Great Wines that Won’t Cost a Fortune (£16.99), edited by Jim Gordon, fits the bill. Essentially, it’s a list of top producers listed country-by-country, each with a potted biography, distilled from experts in their field.

The look of the book is superb, with clear text and photos, and I can assure you the recommendations are spot-on. What sets this apart from Oz’s bottle-guide is that the producers are worth following year in, year out.

If I have a gripe or two, it’s with the order of the listings, particularly under the French section which I found all over the place. Guigal follows Domaines Schlumberger, and Domaines follow Chateaux. Most other guides list the property name without the chateau prefix and I’m happier with that practice.

My other beef is there’s no information where to find the wines although using the excellent website wine-searcher.com can help.

The other concern is value. Robert Parker’s Great Value Wines, released in 2009, is still relevant and is only £12.99.

He lists more than 3,000 wines and the book is a lot more handy and portable.

Pricier, but more comprehensive, are Williamson & Moore’s Wines Behind the Label 2008 (now £25) and Hugh Johnson’s Wine Companion (£40, updated by Steven Brook). Both give much more information on regions and labels.

Finally, Larousse Wine (£40) has the confident soubriquet ‘‘The Definitive Reference for Wine Lovers”.

It’s a glossy, beautifully packaged “catch-all” encyclopedia, aimed at both the beginner and connoisseur.

The first half of this 500-page tome is devoted to wine production, labelling, storage, choice, serving and tasting, and the second a country-by-country exploration of the great wine-regions. A book of two halves, one might say.

So what does it provide?

Well, in reality, nothing new, except a Gallic rather than Anglo-Saxon bias. There is exceptional coverage of France, but features on the New World are scant and leave a lot to be desired.

The second half has been much better covered in Hugh Johnson’s Wine Atlas and Wine Companion, the Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopaedia and the drier Oxford Companion to Wine. In terms of the first half, a similar criticism holds true.

There are simply better-value publications already on the shelves. For me, this is a book that falls between two stools, by simultaneously aiming at novice and wine-buff and trying too hard to please both.