The challenge of summer drinking is keeping your palate perked. The combination of heat, humidity, and a general summertime sense of keep-it-cold-and-keep-it-coming make it tough to stay wine-alert.

With that in mind (midsummer is no time for Big Wine Thoughts), consider the following wines. They’re invigorating wines that cut through a summer’s worth of wine ennui. And, if you’ve got the energy, well, they’re even worth a thought or two.

HERE’S THE DEAL

RIFF PINOT GRIGIO 2004 Seemingly every big-name winegrower wants to “extend the brand,” as the marketing sorts say. And why not? The really hot names never have enough of the wines that made them famous to begin with. Like movie stars and fashion models affixing their name to a perfume or a sneaker, big-name winegrowers are doing the same with branded wines.

One of the latest entries is a brand called Riff (German for reef), created by one of northern Italy’s most famous producers, Alois Lageder. Mr. Lageder already offers a pretty extensive line of white and red wines from his native Alto Adige region, which borders Austria in the foothills of the Alps.

But he also knows that a lot of quite good wine from his neighbors winds up in anonymous, blended-to-the-lowest-common-denominator bottlings created by the winegrowers’ cooperatives common in his region.

Maybe they don’t grow their grapes to Mr. Lageder’s own exigent standards, but some of his fellow growers still deliver tasty goods. With a little astute looking and a lot of discrimination, a producer could put together a swell wine blended from various bulk offerings at a very competitive price. That’s the deal on Riff.

And how good is Riff? Inevitably, every wine and every vintage will only be as good as what’s available to Mr. Lageder. But there’s no denying that he pulled off a savory merger and acquisition in assembling his 2004 vintage pinot grigio.

Most Italian pinot grigios are tasteless affairs as vapid as a snow cone before the syrup. This is an exception. Riff Pinot Grigio 2004 is crisp, surprisingly dense (no water-thin dilution here) and actually has a light mineral savor – which you can’t really expect in a dry white wine this inexpensive. At $9.95 a bottle, this is just the ticket for a summertime aperitif or an ideal keep-it-coming accompaniment to fresh fish.

GRACIANO & GARNACHA 2003, BODEGAS OCHOA There’s something refreshing about a wine label that calls itself Graciano & Garnacha. Granted, it sounds vaguely like vaudeville act, but Spanish producer Bodegas Ochoa (in the Navarra region, which is adjacent to Rioja) is fair-minded. This wine is an equal blend of the graciano and garnacha grape varieties and so they get equal billing.

Garnacha or grenache is well known for its intense, cherry-flavored fruitiness. Spain is the mother lode, growing three-quarters of the world’s entire production of this grape.

Graciano, however, is another story. It’s safe to say that few people have heard of it, much less tasted any. The reason is simple: There’s not much graciano grown today.

Graciano used to be widely planted in Rioja and neighboring Navarra. But it doesn’t yield well. So when the phylloxera root louse destroyed Rioja’s and Navarra’s vineyards in the early 1900s, graciano was not replanted in anywhere near the proportion it once enjoyed. Instead, the high-yielding garnacha and the less-sensitive tempranillo were installed. Yet Spanish wine insiders insist that graciano is one of Spain’s greatest red grapes.

Today, graciano accounts for a paltry 0.5% of all the grapes grown in Navarra. We’re talking an infinitesimal 196 acres out of a total of nearly 40,000 acres of vines in that region. Finding a wine that’s fully 50% graciano, well, that’s a rare thing.

This is lovely red wine, perfumed with graciano’s signature dried blackberry scent with an underlay of garnacha’s characteristic cherry and red raspberry qualities. It’s a ripe-tasting, smooth red wine with surprisingly little tannin – and, happily, no apparent oak either. You can’t beat the price: $10.95 a bottle. Get out the grill and toss on the usual red wine grub. This is the wine that’ll go with any sort of meat, sausage, or even grilled eggplant. It’s worth hunting down.

WILLAKENZIE ESTATE PINOT MEUNIER 2003 One of the challenges of dinner parties these days is that if your guests are wine-interested, you can’t just serve the same old wine warhorses. (New York is bad enough, but experience suggests that wine-smitten San Francisco is worse yet. There, you’re expected to serve or bring a wine so new or esoteric that nobody has even heardof it.)

Anyway, what you want is something as deliciously rare – and good – as WillaKenzie Estate Pinot Meunier 2003 from Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

Of course everyone knows about pinot noir. But its cousin, pinot meunier, is far less well known. It’s only grown in any sizable quantity in France’s Champagne region, where it is used to add greater fruitiness, perfume, and roundness to Champagne’s universal foundation blend of chardonnay and pinot noir. It also buds late and ripens early, which effectively snakes Champagne’s spring and fall rains, ensuring a more reliable crop than pinot noir.

What you don’t see much of is pinot meunier as a regular red wine. First, it’s not widely grown. Second, when it is grown it gets used in sparkling wine. And third, pinot meunier grows best where pinot noir also performs. Like Cinderella, you know who gets asked to the party first.

However, Oregon has a tradition of producing small amounts of pinot meunier strictly for red wine purposes. This tradition began with David Lett of the Eyrie Vineyard who pioneered pinot meunier by planting it in 1966 when he first arrived in the Willamette Valley.

WillaKenzie Estate is a much more recent arrival, founded in 1992 by Frenchman Bernard Lacroute after a lucrative stint in Silicon Valley. He liked what he tasted in Oregon pinot meunier and put in a scant 4 acres.

2003 was an unusually hot year, creating ripe-tasting, ultra-rich wines. This is reflected in the 2003 pinot meunier, which is as big, round, and rich an example of pinot meunier as I can recall tasting. (Yes, I’ve actually had a number over the years in California, Oregon, and Champagne.)

What resulted is a marvelous red wine, strongly reminiscent of pinot noir to be sure, but more perfumey, with pronounced notes of raspberry and black currant. As a wine, pinot meunier matures earlier than pinot noir, so it’s best drunk young and cool. Right now is just about perfect, although it surely will reward several years aging in a cool cellar if you’re so inclined.

There’s not much of this wine, as just 370 cases were produced. But it is locally available. And it’s certainly wonderful drinking. Not least, it’s sure to attract attention and praise at any dinner party where it’s presented. $22.95.