San Francisco

Certain things go perfectly with June-August, like that summer guayabera shirt that screams, "I'm feeling festive tonight!" or that summer girlfriend who screams "How come you haven't called me since last August?" Now, meet your new summer wine, during Riesling Week, June 16-22.

Birthed from small, greenish-yellow grapes that flourish in Germany, Alsace, and Austria's colder growing regions, Rieslings can mean sweeter wines, which most people are familiar with, but they also produce a wealth of dry, peach- and apple-tinged wines that most people are clueless about -- hence the 7 days of blissful education. Riesling Week will showcase the wine's noble qualities as a light, refreshing summer drink, with free tastings at retailers across the city like Union Square Wine & Spirits and Bottlerocket, allowing you to sample several options before finally settling on whichever one has the coolest label. To experience Riesling's prowess as a food pairing, there'll be special menus at a dozen restaurants, from Soho standby Raoul's, to East Village wine hotspot Terroir, to Midtown Northern Italian shrine Alto (your unfortunate nickname during your early teens).

To navigate Riesling Week, check out this map of select retail locations, complete with tasting dates/times-- because one thing that doesn't go with summer is wandering around sweaty and lost, asking frightened passersby where you can find some wine.