If you have been following the wine media, you know 2009 is a sensational vintage for French wines. I was there with my wife, Cheryle, at harvest, tasting grapes alongside some of our favorite winemakers, with pickers working around us. The superb grape quality created pure excitement. The best wines have sensational physiological ripeness and innate complexity coupled with wonderful balance.

Here are a few that have come to the isles:

» The 2009 Domaine Savary Chablis (about $23) is a remarkably light and refreshing white wine. Although this is 100 percent chardonnay, most tasters wouldn’t recognize it as such. Well-made French chablis is really about the limestone soil it is grown in and manifests itself as a highly floral, seashell-type minerality rather than the ripe apple, pineapple, fruit-driven nuances one gets from its American-grown counterparts.

Chablis also has an amazing lightness and crispness that would deceive most Californian chardonnay drinkers into thinking it is another grape variety. It is for this reason, along with its comparatively low alcohol levels, that it is an ideal wine for warm-weather sipping. The 2009 is a complete and inspiring benchmark of what this grape variety can do in a marginal wine-growing region like Chablis.

» The 2009 Lapierre “Raisins Gaulois” (about $15) is another French wine ideal for warm weather. Winemaker/owner Marcel Lapierre helped bring back natural grape growing and winemaking practices and made it “cool.”

He has created controversy over the years with his rogue wine-producing philosophies, but those have caught on in all parts of France’s wine-producing regions.

Lapierre’s cru beaujolais showpiece wine, Morgon, won him acclaim, and his “Raisins Gaulois” is the wine he would serve at his lunch and dinner tables. In both cases the wine is produced from the gamay noir grape variety, the dominant grape for the Beaujolais region and its granite soils.

Both wines are stony, provocative, light-bodied and very delicious. Serve them well chilled and often. Sadly, Lapierre died in November, so this might be the last chance to taste one of his wines.

» Rhone Valley was another region that had a special year in 2009. I visited and tasted with several of the region’s top producers, and I’m anxious to see how the wines have developed in the nearly two years that passed.

Consider the 2009 Faury Syrah (about $19) or the 2009 August Clape “Vin de Amis” (about $23) to find out firsthand what the hoopla is about. These syrah-based red wines will demonstrate how glamorous and majestic the regal syrah can be. This will also perk interest in trying cornas, hermitage and cote rotie. Do yourself and your next generation a big favor by cellaring some of these.

Chuck Furuya is a master sommelier and a partner in the DK Restaurants chain.