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Gardens are sprouting. Clocks have jumped forward. Martha's website has declared it's time for spring cleaning. More tellingly, I just got the urge to open a soave.

I know that it's finally spring when lean, crisp, northern Italian whites start to beckon the palate.

Canadian winter offers a natural edge to full-bodied chardonnays, shirazes, merlots and cabernet sauvignons. They're what Canadian drinkers tend to prefer most of the time. Call them comfort wines if you like.

But wines, like foods, have peak seasons, not in terms of vine-ripened freshness but certainly in terms of visceral appeal and culinary compatibility.

Soave, made from the under-celebrated garganega grape, is to me the oenological equivalent of the season's first spin on a bicycle or in a convertible with the top down, the first walk of the year without a scarf, coat and gloves. (Good producers include Pra, Pieropan and Inama.)

"Springtime is an awakening of our natural world, so it's fun to have an awakening of your wine palate, too," said Tyler Colman, author of A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season.

The book, published late last year, does away with the standard geographical template of so many wine publications, offering month-by-month suggestions paired not only to the weather but also to seasonal celebrations: kosher wines for Passover, for instance.

"That was one thing that really struck me about wine," he told me over the phone from his home in suburban New York. "Nobody had ever plotted a seasonal arc for wine consumption before."

March, the ultimate transitional month, brings that arc into sharp focus.

In spring, Dr. Colman, a political scientist who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the political economy of wine in France and the United States, is a fan of aromatic whites. That's the nickname for varieties with typically pronounced aromas, usually of flowers and ripe fruits. They include riesling, pinot gris, pinot blanc, gewürztraminer, friulano, kerner, gruner-veltliner and muscat (not to be confused with the decidedly non-aromatic muscadet).

"Aromatic whites capture a little bit of that flower aspect, the floral notes, and some nice fruit that lures us back into thinking about warmer weather," Dr. Colman said.

A fan of chenin blanc, Dr. Colman likes the floral quality of the grape, "a veritable field of flowers to greet you on a spring day." At least that's often the case with the best chenin blancs, which come from France's Loire Valley and are named after communes such as Savennieres and Vouvray. If you can find and afford a Nicolas Joly Savennieres ($40 all the way up to $120 for his stellar Clos de la Coulée de Serrant) or a Huet Vouvray ($25 or so), your spring will be off to an auspicious start.

My own preference at this time of year is for whites that, like well-made soave, I'd classify in the geological rather than the floral spectrum. I love lean wines with a tingly, mineral-like seam running through them, such as the aforementioned riesling, friulano, muscadet and, for me the king of spring, Chablis. What's that about March, lions and lambs? My March comes in with cabernet and goes out with Chablis.

A northern satellite region of Burgundy, Chablis specializes in a uniquely lean, crisp style of chardonnay. Producers generally eschew the heavy vanilla characters of oak-barrel aging in favour of a tingly, bone-dry quality that evokes the surrounding chalky soil.

Chablis isn't cheap, either, starting at roughly $18. But it's generally under-priced by Burgundy standards. That's partly because producers don't have to pass along the cost of $1,000-a-barrel oak aging. Good, widely available brands include Drouhin, William Fevre and Louis Moreau. But it's hard to go far wrong with any Chablis - unless it's a fake one from some place other than France, namely California.

Like many professional wine enthusiasts, Dr. Colman has an incorrigibly adventurous palate when it comes to wine styles. The thought of sticking with the same old label all year long holds little appeal.

Yet even self-professed experts with big cellars can be guilty of stylistic inertia. They often like to stick to what they know so that they can show off their knowledge to guests, and what they tend to know is big reds such as Bordeaux and California cabernet sauvignon.

It's natural to have a go-to style that you know well, but drinking a complex, heavy, high-alcohol red on a breezy patio is like taking a Bentley on safari. Many self-respecting sommeliers will tell you that subtle aromas tend to be lost to the wind when a wine is uncorked outdoors.

If the change in weather isn't enough reason to change your wine-shopping practices in spring, perhaps food is. Seasonal cooking is all the rage, finally, among home chefs. For people who care about wine pairing, this dictates a certain seasonal approach to drinking. Spring specialties such as asparagus, for example, are ideal with sauvignon blanc, another wine that to me never tastes as good in January as it does in April and May. Some of the best from France go by such regional names as Sancerre or Pouilly-Fumé - these run about $20 to $30. But there are excellent sauvignon blancs costing $10 from Chile and South Africa, and from New Zealand for $12 to $25.

Dr. Colman says part of his inspiration for A Year of Wine was a dinner he had with his wife at a fancy restaurant while vacationing in the Virgin Islands three years ago. "The whole wine list was composed of these Napa cabs," he said. "We wanted something fun and light and refreshing." Their light and refreshing solution: mineral water.

Wines for spring need not be white. Among reds, Dr. Colman is fond of barbera, the crisp, medium-bodied red of Italy. Paitin and Palmina are among the producers he likes from Piedmont. In this market, much more widely available producers include Michele Chiarlo and Pio Cesare.

The northeastern Piedmont region also makes a bright, crisp red called dolcetto that's perfect for sipping all summer long.

I happen to be a Beaujolais fan in spring. One good and affordable example: Bouchard Père & Fils Beaujolais-Villages 2007 ($13). Another fine choice would be entry-level red Burgundy, made from the pinot noir grape. Chanson makes a good one, simply called Le Bourgogne ($20), available in several provinces. Or try the newly arrived 2007 vintage of Bouchard Père & Fils Pinot Noir Bourgogne ($18).

If you like heft in your red wines but want something slightly more aromatic, consider a monastrell from Spain. Even cabernet sauvignons, though usually full-bodied, come in different styles. Those grown in remote Western Australia, notably in the Margaret River region, tend to be leaner and livelier (because of the cool growing conditions) than the predominantly heavy cabernets of Australia's main grape-growing expanse in the southeast.

Dr. Colman says that attention to the environment in which a wine is consumed can not only prod a drinker out of a "chardonnay-cabernet rut," it will tend to underscore the folly of slavishly heeding the numerical scores of influential wine critics.

"The wine trade is really driven by points, and points are all about taking wine out of context," he says. Consumers don't drink 70 wine samples at a time in windowless rooms, he adds.

To be fair, neither do all critics. Right now, for example, I'm sipping a Beaujolais by an open window. It really is beginning to feel like spring.

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Tasting notes

Inama Soave Classico

2007, Italy, $26

Fleshy for a light soave, subtly floral, with notes of apricot and honey. Easter in a glass.

Peninsula Ridge

Sauvignon Blanc

2004, Ontario, $15

Impressively rich texture underpinning crisp citrus and aromatic herbs.

Wild South

Sauvignon Blanc

2007, New Zealand, $19

(available in Quebec only)

The textbook New Zealand style, zippy, grassy and bursting with citrus-like fruit.

Bouchard Père & Fils

Beaujolais-Villages

2007, France, $13

Light, bright, crisp and fun.

Cherry bubblegum in a bottle.

Bouchard Père & Fils

Pinot Noir Bourgogne

2007, France, $18

Medium-bodied, slightly silky and remarkably ripe.

Bodegas Sierra Salinas

MO Monastrell

2006, Spain, $17

Luscious fruit in this monastrell-led blend but without the lumbering weight of cabernet.

Uplifting acidity and soft spice.

Beckett's Flat Five Stones Cabernet Shiraz

2007, Australia, $20

Relatively light, herb-nuanced red blend from cool Margaret River in Western Australia. Not only elegant and light on its feet, it's kosher and mevushal for Passover.

bcrosariol@globeandmail.com