For good and ill, for praise and blame, the prevailing image is of the Old France, and one might expect a volume entitled The New France to be as slim as one on unwooded Australian Shiraz, or for it to be largely devoted to the Languedoc and other parts of 'France's New World', as the cliché has it, where ambitious innovation and experimentation at the highest level exist alongside despairing old-style vignerons and their drab co-operatives.

Andrew Jefford's book, however, grows out of his love for the old France and its wines, and from a conviction that they have changed and progressed - spurred on not least by the competition of younger wine-producing countries. Although most of the book is organised by region, Jefford finds space to discuss some of the themes of innovation and development at useful length: such as organic and biodynamic viticulture (hardly new, but receiving increasing attention), and modern winemaking interventions like micro-oxygenation and concentration through reverse osmosis.

What will perhaps surprise those who know Jefford's writing for Decanter and other British publications is the welcome he extends to so many innovations in technique and approach. Traditional Bordeaux lovers, for example, have generally been much exercised by its prostration in the past decade or so to the tastes of powerful American market-drivers like Robert Parker and the WIne Spectator. They might have expected Jefford to weigh in on their side, but no - he considers the situation in Bordeaux, and decides that, despite some 'sillinesses and excesses', a 'stale and confined world has become a broad and adventurous one'. He also rates the Rhône internationalist/modernist Marcel Guigal a full three stars, and leaves the more traditionalist (though scarcely old-fashioned) Hermitage house of Chave with just two.

It is not, in fact, too troubling to find things to disagree with in a book as intelligent and lively as this one, which itself recognises controversy and debate. Each section on a region includes items under the rubric 'Flak', discussing specific problems. 'Champagne Flak', for example, looks at steadly upwards-creeping yields, the way growers are too often rewarded for mediocrity, and the 'surprisingly dilapidated condition' of Champagne's vineyards.

At the heart of each regional discussion, however, is an account of 'The Adventure of the Land', accompanying a map, and considering the meaningfulness of terroir and its expression in the appellations of that region. The aim and reason of France's appellation system is, says Jefford (who frequently evidences a rather self-conscious literariness), 'to lend a sensual print to rock, stone, slope and sky'.

This book is not really, as its subtitle has it, 'A complete guide to contemporary French wine'; in 250 illustrated pages no book could pretend to that. An admitted elitism also contributes to a restriction of focus that has some shortcomings: it is only the positive and interesting trends and the finer wines, on the whole, that Jefford tells us about, which sometimes leaves important gaps. So that one comes away from the few pages on Beaujolais, for example, knowing there are a few excellent wines, but without an account of why the region is getting an increasingly bad press and, in fact, undergoing a major crisis.

What Jefford does generally do well is give the essence of the character of each large winemaking region in France and the way its best producers are working with their bits of the earth and grappling with the contemporary world's challenges. Apart from the themes of terroir and 'flak', each section gives some account of the most important producers of each region, as well as an introductory overview. And there are portraits of interesting or significant individuals associated with the region - in words and in excellent black and white photographs by Jason Lowe. These portraits add greatly to the sense of life, of excitement, in this book and its portrayal of France's dynamic and brilliant wine culture - surely one of the highpoints of human interaction with nature.

I have not noticed The New France in local bookshops, but it is worth going to trouble to get. Although it is also not easy to buy French wines here, especially easily affordable ones, Jefford's book is not irrelevant to local winelovers. Many of the debates it touches on are not foreign to local wine production, for one thing. Essentially, though, it offers an excellent and unintimidating introduction to anyone wanting to explore French wine, and, to those who already know something about it, a fascinating overview of its dynamism at the beginning of what will surely prove to be a challenging century.

This book has won a number of important awards, and hopefully this added prominence will help it play its part in re-establishing French wine's reputation. In the face of widespread dumbing-down, it reminds us that France remains the great spiritual home for all those fools who want to make and drink wine beyond the constrictions of facile brand-marketing and the sad misrepresentations of those who tell us that wine offers no more subtlety or profundity than brash and alcoholic fruit-juice.