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If there is one thing that I buy as compulsively as wine, it is books. I have, quite literally, thousands of them; some 400-odd cook books at the last count.

I just love them. Despite that, I'm a bit funny about wine books. I don't have anything like the collection you might expect.

Friends are forever telling me that my cookery collection borders on the obscene, and complain that I can't possibly need several hundred recipes for lemon tart or hollandaise sauce and they are right.

What they fail to understand though is that I love salivating over them. A few pages of Nigel Slater, and I throw myself into the kitchen for a day of bread-making, and Margaret Costa makes me feel as though I've got a kitchen-full of cuddly grannies all egging me on to make tasty things.

In short, I am inspired by their passion and sheer devotion to food. It is only a very few wine books that make me feel so inspired.

Andrew Jefford's The New France: A Complete Guide to Contemporary French Wine is one. His writing is a winning combination of the fascinating, the evocative and the intimate.

He makes you want to quit your job and spend your days visiting the vineyards and tasting the wines he describes so eloquently.

The other is Michael Broadbent's Vintage Wine: Fifty Years of Tasting Over Three Centuries of Wine. This isn't the sort of book that you read in the classical page-by-page sense. It's a beguiling blend of reference and anecdotes.

What makes it so appealing is the fabulously approachable writing and the lovely conclusions to the tasting notes that refer to the place, the people or the food that the wine was tasted with. It's this personal touch that makes it so readable.

Coinciding with this year's English Wine Week (Saturday to Sunday, June 1) is the launch of David Harvey's book Grape Britain: A Tour of Britain's Vineyards (£14.99). A preview copy dropped on the mat just in time to keep me company on a rather long train journey.

David was a manager at Oddbin's in Leeds, before leaving to devote himself to exploring the vineyards of England and Wales. You can't accuse him of not being thorough. The book takes you through vineyards as far apart as the Channel Islands, Gwent, Scotland, and Kent.

The book is one of two parts. It begins with a useful summary of the history of wine in the UK, notes on some of the key vintages in recent years and the key grape varieties that are grown here. Part two is a detailed tour of native vineyards, which is divided into key areas.

It is, in essence, like a series of short postcards that you might receive from a man on a vinous gap year.

He describes each and every vineyard visited. Accompanying vineyard information, there is historical detail or commentary on the local architecture or on the frustrations of being greeted by a closed sign'. From time to time, he'll draw attention to a wine he has particularly enjoyed.

Where Grape Britain is successful is in bringing our attention to the truly extensive number of vineyards that are being managed in the UK. It's eye-opening to realise just how many people have been making wine and for how long.

It is the breadth of vineyards visited and the desire to mention them all that has, I think, caused the book to be slightly disappointing.

It is my feeling that the writer, in his undoubted enthusiasm and love for his subject, has backed off being more critical or at least brave enough to address in more detail the long-term challenges for our home-grown wine industry and how our winemakers are seeking to address them.

The book is, however, the first of its kind. It's a cheerfully written guide to our vineyards, and I suspect there will be plenty of people who pick up a copy that will be surprised to learn that there's a vineyard to visit much closer to home than they'd ever imagined.

English Wine Week starts tomorrow, and Oxfordshire's vineyards will once again be hosting a series of open days and visits as part of the festivities. You can find more information at englishwineweek.co.uk As part of the celebrations, the Oxford Times Wine Club's mixed case this week includes two wines from Brightwell Vineyards, just outside Wallingford.

Click here for The Oxford Times Wine Club offers.

2:22pm Thursday 22nd May 2008

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