Wine lovers make gift giving easy. Never mind pondering whether to buy that foulard scarf or cashmere sweater in just the right shade. Wine lovers want wine stuff, and it is amazing how wine begets such a universe of peripherals ideal for gifting. Here are my choices for the season. “The Oxford Companion to Wine” (third edition) by Jancis Robinson ($65) Hands down the widest ranging, most readable wine reference of all. Nearly 4,000 entries (up by 400 from the 2000 edition) range from a leisurely essay, “Literature of Wine,” to a concise entry on the scary-sounding “Black Dead Arm” (a vine disease). And there are surprises. Who would have imagined, for example, that Turkey has more vineyard acreage than the United States? Ms. Robinson also manages to get in, amid the voluminous data, some tart opinions. Her entry for Diago, for example, notes that the world’s largest wine company “has no obvious wine strategy.” For inveterate Googlers, this handsomely produced reference will bring back the pleasure of idly turning pages. Johnson’s guide is as compressed as the Oxford Companion is expansive. Strong on wine ratings, it includes 20 pages of sometimes unsparing appraisals of Bordeaux. The Margaux property Marquis d’Alesme-Becker, for example, is dismissed as “an underperforming cru classe, once highly regarded.” Wine pairing recommendations, from fennel-based dishes to moussaka, are spot on. Not to be missed are two cogent personal essays by Mr. Johnson: his three-decade overview of the wine scene called “The Plot So Far” and “Agenda 2007,” an attack on the cult of ever-more-alcoholic wines that rises to Churchillian eloquence. These two books, one a shelf stalwart and the other a true pocket guide, come close to covering the whole of the wine world.