3) Chinon and other Loire reds. If you’re a lover of big red wines, just skip to No. 4. Loire reds, usually made from cabernet franc and malbec (called cot in the region), and sometimes from gamay noir, eternally live on the edge of underripeness. When they’re underripe, they can be filled with green, vegetal flavors and harsh edges. But when they’re just ripe enough, they are sublime: light-bodied and yet densely aromatic, custom-tailored for food.

• Yannick Amirault 2003 Bourgueil “La Coudrage” ($19, Weygandt-Metzler): Heady, perfumed scents of red fruit, graphite and violets.  It’s a classic Loire red, almost fragile with a light body. Finishes soft and long, with fine tannin woven in. The depth of the scents, and a density of fruit flavor, helps balance it out.
• Bernard Baudry 2004 Chinon “Les Granges” ($16, Louis/Dressner): Smoky, filled with dried herb and dried cherry. Lovely and supple, a bit on the light side but with an invigorating dry mineral character. Juicy and fresh.

4) Sweet, red, sparkling. Done with all the jokes?  Good.  Because you can mock this stuff all you like, but at least a few serious winemakers see the virtues in making it. A couple years ago we sang the praises of off-dry Bugey-Cerdon (which I still drink every chance I get) from France’s Jura, and now the sweet-fizz fever is spreading.

• Jean-Paul Brun NV vin mousseux demi-sec “FRV 100” ($15, Louis/Dressner): The strangest, and most exhilarating, of Beaujolais wines.  It’s sparkling, it’s more pink than red, fresh and light (7.5 percent alcohol), just slightly sweet and completely unique.  Ripe strawberry juice is the smell, with dried flowers and a bit of talc.  Beautifully bubbly, with just enough sweetness to push you to one more glass, but not enough sugar to weigh you down. Carefree and irresistible. The name is pronounced the way the French say “effervescent” — eff-ehr-vay-sahnt.

5) Find yourself a new white. For months, I’ve been picking on drinkers of the more standard white wines, like chardonnay and pinot grigio. It’s not entirely fair, but white wine drinkers have a habit of falling into a rut, often because the new can be scary. A couple years ago at The Slanted Door in San Francisco, I watched a very exasperated bartender field a dozen or more requests for either of the two aforementioned wines. The restaurant — whose wine list specializes in German and Austrian varieties — offered neither, so he patiently offered tastes of riesling and gruner veltiner to wary drinkers. The easiest path to change here is to focus on just one type of new wine at a time. For months, I’ve been mildly obsessed with the Valle d’Aosta, in Italy’s far northwestern corner, where it intersects France and Switzerland. The region makes barely any wine, usually from local grape varieties, and only a scattering of bottles makes it to these shores. But the mountainous vineyards and cold winters make for sharp, clear-eyed wines.

• Grosjean 2005 petite arvine Vallée d’Aoste ($23, Rosenthal Wine Merchant):  From a grape best known in Switzerland, this develops an almost meaty, heavy nose, filled with white flowers, grapefruit and lime. Bracing and fresh, despite being on the big side (13.5 percent alcohol), the fruit mixes with a bracing grassiness, like a torrontes or a more subtle sauvignon blanc.
• Cave de Blanc de Morgex et de la Salle 2004 Vallée d’Aoste DOC ($13, Polaner Selections): Made from the prié blanc grape, it’s like an Alpine version of Muscadet — tart, with bright lime and white floral overtones. Fresh, lingering acidity and a limestone minerality cuts through the fruit.

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