With midsummer comes the pleasure of inhaling the perfume of ripe, local fruit at the city’s greenmarkets. I buy whatever smells most seductive, like the basket of apricots now aromatizing my kitchen. The scent and flavor of wine, however, is locked away in the bottle, making its purchase – if you’re not already familiar with the brand – a bit of a crapshoot. But the good news is that, thanks to a loosening up of state alcoholic-beverage regulations, more wine shops are regularly scheduling tasting events at which you can sniff and sip an array of wines offered for sale. The pourer is often a winery representative or even a winemaker, who can put the contents of your glass in authoritative perspective.

Last Friday and Saturday, I made the scene at five such tastings, where I sampled almost two dozen wines from all over the map and price spectrum. My planned first stop was at Morrell in Rockefeller Center, but half a block away – at the Friday Greenmarket on Rockefeller Plaza – I fell to chatting with John Martini, a cheerful, slightly grizzled farmer who sells the wines he makes at Anthony Road Winery on the shore of Lake Seneca, one of the Finger Lakes. Riesling shines in this region, so I first sampled two examples from Anthony Road, one dry, the other off-dry, both sharing characterful mineral layers and a citrus snap. The wine I bought, however, was one less easily found: a Vignoles 2004, a cross between hardy native grapes and classic European varieties. At $9, it’s a nice summer quaff with good acidity balancing a dollop of sweetness.

A pair of full-throttle, California whites were being poured at Morrell. The first was Caymus Conundrum 2003 ($25), a multi-grape white wine mentioned in this column last week. On smell alone, it’s possibly the most distinctive American white wine I know of, instantly recognizable for its melding of herbal undertones with potent, peachy top notes. The other white was Mer Soleil 2002 ($40), a richly textured, brown-butter chardonnay from the Santa Lucia Highlands. Morrell is an upscale shop, and perhaps it’s time for it to get rid of the little plastic cups in favor of real glasses. It would be a favor to the wines.

My next stop was Union Square Wines, always a bustling spot on the sampling circuit, where a quartet of wines from Beaujolais showed off the individuality of this underrated appellation. At the basic level, Georges Duboeuf’s Beaujolais-Villages 2004 ($9.99) was a prototypical mouthful of zingy strawberry fruit. Atop the hierarchy, the same producer’s Moulin-a-Vent ($8.99), was rich and deep – sure to deliver years of pleasurable drinking. The pricing is off-kilter here, with this beauty costing a dollar less than the basic wine, but I didn’t complain when my bottle was rung up. Another superior Beaujolais was Marcel Lapierre’s Morgon 2003 ($20), with its complex notes of licorice and wild black fruit.

With prime tasting opportunities in Manhattan, it takes something special to lure me elsewhere. Zachys, in Scarsdale, goes the extra mile, and so did I last Saturday, heading up on Metro-North to this high-profile shop that conducts an ambitious tasting program. First up were a pair of sparkling wines from Judy Jordan’s J Vineyards in Healdsburg, which is best known for sparkling wine. The elegant J 1999 Vintage Brut ($23) had the snap of a liquified Granny Smith apple, and was startlingly fresh for a five-year-old wine. The J Rose NV ($29) had just the barest coppery tint, but filled the mouth with the richness of its 70% pinot noir component. J Pinot Gris ($16) was correct but impersonal, while the fragrant and elegant Russian River Valley Pinot Noir 2003 ($21) echoed long in the mouth.

Stationed at the other end of Zachys’s pouring table was John Hunt, founder of the Oriel wine series, sourced from more than 20 wine regions worldwide. There was a creamy-textured Barona Albarino 2004 ($16), from northwestern Spain, and Portia Bianco delle Venezia 2004 ($15.99) from Italy, a fleshy, bitter-almond inflected blend of pinot grigio, chardonnay, and tocai. Oriel’s Jasper Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir ($22) matched the elegant style of the J version, although it was a shade riper. For me, top honors in the Oriel lineup went to l’Exception Saint-Emilion 2002 ($75). Its winemaker, Alain Raynaud, was on hand with Mr. Hunt. Three-quarters merlot, with minority contributions of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, and malbec, it was a dark, spicy wine: plump but not flabby. This was merlot in its glory.

Disembarking at the 125th Street Metro-North station after my foray to Zachys, I strolled over to Harlem Vintage, a small shop with a big spirit on Frederick Douglass Boulevard. Since its opening almost a year ago, uptown wine buffs no longer have to travel to find a “serious” wine selection – or to find a Saturday wine tasting. There’s a small-town atmosphere to these events and strangers interact in friendly ways that would be alien downtown. Among the five modestly priced wines being poured, the Chardonnay 2003 and Cinsault Rose 2003 under the always reliable Les Jamelles label, both Vins de Pays d’Oc, were admirable $10 wines. At $15, California’s Bargetto Merlot rolled out round, plummy flavors.

My plan was to whistle stop at yet two more tastings, Discovery Wines on Avenue A and Crush Wines on East 57th Street. But the summer heat and so many wine samplings had tired me out. I went straight home and made myself a tall glass of minted ice tea.