Choosing gifts for the wine lovers in your life can be a minefield, as passions among oenophiles can sometimes run as high as those in the most spirited political or religious debates. To avoid a dreaded, "Oh, you shouldn't have," we offer two gift ideas that are sure to stimulate and surprise even the most jaded winelover.

Our vote for book -- and gift -- of the year goes to "A History of the World in Six Glasses," by Tom Standage, technology editor at The Economist and contributor to Wired magazine.

Philosopher Carl Popper stated that, "There is no history of mankind; there are only many histories of all aspects of human life." Standage certainly has taken this advice to heart, explaining, "Just as archaeologists divide history into different periods based on the use of different materials -- the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and so on -- it is also possible to divide world history into periods dominated by different drinks. Six beverages in particular -- beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and cola -- chart the flow of world history."

Wine was the lifeblood of Mediterranean civilization, and the basis of the vast sea trade that spread Greek ideas throughout the world, making it a logical place to start. However, Standage begins further back in prehistory, postulating that beer may have been the motor for the creation of writing -- and perhaps for civilization itself.

Archaeologists have long puzzled over the fact that after wandering for tens of thousands of years in small bands of hunter-gatherers, humans suddenly took up farming around 10,000 B.C. and settled down in villages, which quickly grew into the first cities.

Although this transition occurred before the advent of written history, pictograms from early pottery show that, by 4,000 B.C., beer drinking was already an extremely important and widespread part of society. Therein lies the story.

Standage postulates that prehistoric peoples at some point discovered that while wild cereal grains -- notably wheat and barley -- couldn't be eaten raw, they provided quite good sustenance if cooked. He goes on to note that cereal grains also had three extremely important properties.

First, they were the only food available at that time which, if kept dry and safe, could be consumed not only months but even years later.

Second, if the grains are soaked in water, which surely happened both accidentally and intentionally, an enzymatic transformation begins to convert starch into very sweet maltose sugar. This so-called "malting" process would have been extremely highly valued at a time when naturally occurring sweets were virtually unknown outside of the summer months.

Finally, Standage speculates that early people at some point noticed that if boiled gruel was left to sit for a few days, it would often become fizzy and intoxicating. The altered state of consciousness that this produced must have seemed like a gift directly from the gods. And unlike fruit or honey-based fermented drinks that may have existed at that time, this "accidental beer" could be produced year-round, as long as a sufficient amount of grain could be harvested and safely stored.

Paleo-nutritionists have pointed out that such early beer would have been very rich in yeasts and vitamin B, easily compensating for the decline in B vitamins that would have resulted from a shift away from a primarily carnivorous diet. Perhaps more importantly, beer-making required boiling water, which unintentionally but effectively circumvented the problems of contaminated drinking water that plagued all but the smallest human settlements.

Therefore early beer drinkers enjoyed, as modern economists might put it, a comparative nutritional advantage of quite substantial proportions.

Standage goes into great detail about how the archaeological record shows that early villages of this period were centered around secure, watertight communal grain storehouses, and how clay tokens were used to record who had contributed how much grain.

Although a bit of a stretch, he goes on to speculate that those who managed the stores decided it would be more efficient to impress the image of a grain token onto a wet clay tablet, rather than distribute the tokens themselves. Eventually the seals were discarded altogether in favor of scratching stylized images directly into the clay. As the symbols for grain and beer were among the most widely found pictograms in early Sumerian writing, Standage concludes that the need to track the raw materials for beer production may have indeed been the impetus that gave birth to modern writing.

Standage continues with five equally intriguing stories about how wine, spirits, tea, coffee and cola have each altered the course of human history. This book is well worth seeking out, both for generalists and imbibers of all sorts.

The Wine Spectator's pick for book of the year is "Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine." This well-researched history was written by George Taber, the only journalist to attend the now-infamous blind tasting in Paris 30 years ago in which a panel of all-French judges chose a 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay over a selection of top White Burgundies, and a 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet over a flight of top red Bordeaux.

Even though we know many of the players personally (full disclosure: I run the import company that represents both California wineries in Japan), it still seemed hard to imagine that an entire book could have been written about a single tasting. Fortunately, author Taber thought so as well. More than half the book is instead an in-depth history of the nascent California wine industry, with a particular focus on the personal stories of the founding fathers of wine in the critical years between the end of Prohibition (1933) and the 1976 Paris Tasting.

Andre Tchelistcheff, Martin Ray, Joe Heitz, Robert Mondavi, Lee Stewart and a handful of others have now been immortalized as pioneers, but as Taber tells their stories, it becomes clear that at the time they were sometimes considered nothing more than passionate nutters in an endeavor that some thought would never be able to compete against the local prune industry.

One of the more interesting coincidences documented in Taber's history was that both winemakers whose efforts went on to win the Paris tasting had each worked, at separate times, for Lee Stewart. He started Chateau Souverain in 1943, and was a fanatic for cleanliness in the cellar, an unusual passion at the time. (Tchelistcheff reported that when he started at Beaulieu he found a rat floating in a tank of Sauvignon Blanc.)

Mike Grgich apprenticed for Stewart in 1958, and went on to become the winemaker at Chateau Montelena, crafting the 1973 Chardonnay that triumphed in Paris. He left shortly thereafter to set up, with partner Austin Hills of the Hills Brothers coffee family, the eponymous Grgich Hills winery.

Aspiring winemaker Warren Winiarski joined Stewart in 1964, and studied with him for two vintages before going on to start Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, where he remains to this day. Both stories are told in detail by Taber.

That two California upstarts had bested the top wines in France was "the shot heard around the world" both within the wine business and among consumers. As Taber goes on to document, increased demand for California wine following the Paris victory led to increased sales, which in turn help finance upgrades in vineyards and equipment. This virtuous circle led to better quality wines, more sales and even more investment, helping catapult California to where it is today.

Given Napa's unique climate and the enthusiasm of the winemaking pioneers, California certainly would have prospered without the Paris tasting. But those who've been lucky in love (or in blind tastings) should never be embarrassed to say, "We'll always have Paris."