How terribly convenient this year’s holiday calendar is for merchants. Here it is Wednesday and, hey, it’s “only” December 22. Of course they’d love it if Christmas fell on Sunday rather than Saturday, but patience is a virtue: next year it will.

In the meantime, last-minute shoppers can still be stumped for gift ideas for wine lovers on their lists. Wine lovers are easy to buy for (we’re acquisitive beasts, after all) but also rather trying. Precisely because we can be persnickety beasts – did you get the right vintage? – there’s always apprehension, too. Do they already have it? Will I look like a rube if I give them this? (Call it the Blue Nun Syndrome.)

If you’re in this last-minute position, here’s help. Trust me: your wine-beastie gift recipents very likely don’t have the following. And they’ll love ’em, too.

HERE’S THE ( LAST – MINUTE GIFT ) DEALS

THE CHAMPAGNE GLASS THEY REALLY WANT: RIEDEL SOMMELIER VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE Can it only be a decade or so ago that the Riedel name was still largely unknown in America? I recall recommending Riedel glasses in one of my books back in 1989 and I can assure you that almost nobody had then heard of this Austrian glassmaker. Today, of course, you can’t open the pages of a glossy magazine without seeing the smiling faces of one or another of the Riedel clan.

Anyone who has tried one of Riedel’s vast array of wine glasses has to admit, sometimes reluctantly, that they do make a difference. One of the less ballyhooed glasses – a personal favorite – is Riedel’s mouth-blown Sommeliers series “Vintage Champagne” glass. When I first tried this glass it felt so balanced in the hand, delicate against the lips, and just so damned Cary Grant-elegant that I promptly sold my Baccarat stems. Not least, it made the sparkling wine come alive to the nose like no other.

This is the best glass for sparkling wine that I know and a terrific holiday gift. List price is $60. Look for a street price as low as $45.

THE WINE TO GO WITH CHESTNUTS ROASTING ON AN OPEN FIRE: WARRE’S LATE BOTTLED VINTAGE PORT 1994 Various categories of port exist, with names such as ruby port, tawny port, vintage port, and the most ambiguous of all, late bottled vintage port.

And just what is late bottled vintage port? A marketing idea, really. And not necessarily a bad one if done right. Warre’s – one of the best and most famous port houses – has not only done it right, they’ve done it great. This is the finest late bottled vintage port I know.

The idea behind late bottled vintage port is that true vintage port – the most expensive and finest port type – simply takes an inhumanly long time to mature, upwards of two or three decades. Who has the patience? A late bottled vintage port is supposed to have some of the character and dimension of a real vintage port but be ready to drink now.

Most bottlings don’t deliver these goods. Too often they resemble a better-quality ruby port with some additional bottle age. You’re not going to confuse such wines with a real vintage port. However, with Warre’s Late Bottled Vintage Port 1994, you really can confuse it with its namesake. Are they equal? Of course not. But they’re surprisingly close.

The way Warre’s pulls this off is the old story: rigor. Only top vintages are used (1994 was a great port year). That’s a good start. The wine itself is well selected. It’s aged for four years in wood casks and then – here’s the clincher – it’s given a minimum of another four years of aging in bottle before release. Actually, the currently available 1994 now has a full decade on it. What’s more, the wine is neither fined nor filtered, two winemaking processes that remove sediment but also, alas, flavor.

It all adds up to an exceptional late bottled port. This is rich, intense, fully mature port that really does taste a lot like a true vintage thing – without the wait. Also, it’s only slightly sweet. (Some bottlings can be very sweet, the better to mask an absence of character.) It’s great stuff and you can’t beat the price: $24 a bottle. For a fine wine with 10 years of age, that’s a steal.

CURLING UP WITH A GOOD BOOK: “NORTH AMERICAN PINOT NOIR” The wine-wackiest person on your list is surely the pinot noir lover. Something about this grape variety brings out the moon-howler in us all. Where cabernet sauvignon is a sure thing, pinot noir is a tease. It drives you mad, yet you can’t stop thinking about it.

Proof is found in “North American Pinot Noir” (University of California Press, 2004) by John Winthrop Haeger. A 445-page, 2 1 /2-pound tome, “North American Pinot Noir” is a persuasive demonstration of how this lovely red wine grape can take an otherwise sober scholar of Chinese language and literature and make him spend the better part of a decade visiting pinot noir producers in California, Oregon, and British Columbia, among other North American pinot points.

Everything you might ever want to know about pinot noir – winemaking techniques, clonal selections, climates, winery particulars – is exhaustively detailed in this work of loving madness. Mr. Haeger is not, it must be said, especially critical. Seemingly, he’s never met a pinot noir he doesn’t like. And if one exists for him (surely it must), he discreetly leaves it unmentioned. A gentleman taster, you might say.

Chances are very good your favorite wine reader does not yet have this brand-new book. It’s an outstanding choice among this year’s wine book offerings. $34.95.