Wines of France

by Alexis Lichine.Knopf, $3.75.

The only comprehensive and completely up-to-date book on its subject, by the only American to own a vineyard in Burgundy. Mr. Lichine is an exacting expert, chary of the label “great" and rigorously forthright about the defects of a vintage. Connoisseurship and agreeable writing are happily united in this compactly encyclopedic book. The appendix reproduces the Official Classification of the Bordeaux wines; suggests a “model cellar": and contains a 1926 to 1949) vintage chart of the main varieties of French wine, with ratings of zero to twenty. No wine drinker can dwell for long in Mr. Lichine’s delightful pages without starting to feel, thirstily, the force of the old French slogan: “Une journée sans vin est comme une journée sons soleil.”