Crisp, grassy, light, dry … these are wine notes that make us think of summertime. This week, as the whole Northeast corridor continues waking up from its winter nap, some key wine writers focused on sauvignon blanc — a wine that’s often followed closely by the descriptor “grassy.” It can be herbal and fresh, even astringent, but it depends on their region of origin.

Dottie and John of The Wall Street Journal focus on South African sauvignon blanc, and they include some chenin blancs as well. “We wondered if American consumers are slow in embracing South African wines for good reason or if they’re missing something,” they write.

They prepare a helpful tasting report, which you should check out if this is one grape that’s on your perpetual wine shopping list. “Our verdict: If you are seriously interested in good values today, this is an aisle you should visit. We found the wines consistently good and consistently interesting.” There’s a lot of talk in their report about salad flavors — green bell pepper and lettuces tastes — and mention of one with a “lime kick.”

Now, all that stuff about green tastes is great — so long as we have some nice cheese or some other salty snack to go with it. Reading Karen and Andrew’s sauvignon blanc column in The Washington Post, we felt a little better about our own personal reticence to sip sauvignon blanc on its own. Karen apparently didn’t love this wine until she tasted some with more forward fruit and mineral flavors; they talk about French sauvignon blanc as well as some from New Zealand that have those characteristics.

Also, they note that “Though some California winemakers celebrate sauvignon blanc’s grassiness … many have been taking steps to deemphasize such overtly green flavors. Robert Mondavi went so far as to age his in oak, which brought out softer, more melonlike fruitiness in the wine.”

Eric Asimov, who also sounds like he has spring fever, writes in The New York Times this week about dry German Rieslings. Some people drink Riesling precisely for the opposite reason — they presume it will be sweet — but as Asimov explains, “Many Americans assume all rieslings are sweet. In fact, most rieslings, whether from Austria, Alsace, Australia or the United States, are dry. Even more surprising is the fact that many German rieslings are dry, too, and that the preference in Germany today and for the last 20 years has overwhelmingly been for dry rieslings.”

A friend of ours who knows wine was hosting a females-only party recently, and she was stressing out about finding a white wine the whole group would be happy sipping along with the cheese and olives. She went with Bex Riesling, from Germany’s Mosel region. It was characterized by the floor salesman at the terrific Wine Cellars of Annapolis, where we found it, as a “party wine,” and that is just what she was looking for. It’s only about $10 or $12 a bottle, and believe us when we tell you: This wine is trouble. Wine aficionados and know-nothings alike were killing bottles of it like there was no tomorrow (for some of us in attendance that night, tomorrow was a very bad place to be).

We could sit around and drink Riesling, snacks or no snacks, dry or with a touch of sugar, pretty much all day long, but the ones with too much sugar give us a headache. Not so with one of our friends, who claimed to dislike all wine until we introduced her to sweet Riesling. Now, there is always a cold bottle of the stuff — and maybe one other wine she is branching out and trying — chilling in her fridge.

Readers: Do you have a sauvignon blanc or a Riesling you adore and always have on hand? Please write us a comment if you have one to recommend, or just a funny story to tell.