My wife just gave me the bad news: when I grill, I overcook.

Her doctor told her she was getting too much carbon in her diet, so I guess I can't use the "forge" setting on the grill anymore. Small price to pay, though. It's deep into spring here in Boston, and you can practically see summer from here. In fact, the little taste of summer we've had has been more than enough for many. Once it gets over 85 degrees, everything changes: what people wear, how they sit, and how the wine tastes.

White wines we'd never have given the time of day are now stars. Vernaccia di San Gimignano is perfect for summer drinking. Normally, it's about the color of water with hardly any flavor. What this wine has, when chilled ice cold, is explosive acidity and intense mouth feel that's outstanding with seafood from raw bar to grilled shrimp or meaty marinated monk fish.

Now the problem with red wine in summer is two-fold. First, the carbon, which I mentioned above, is hard to match. It's like matching wine to a machine gun: what's going to stand up to something that strong? My experience is that only the strongest wines will survive a head-on collision with a charcoal grill, air bag or no air bag.

Second is the temperature. Nothing's worse than hot red wine, and the temperature control on a picnic is nothing to write home about. No question about it: come summer, you can safely toss your red wines in the refrigerator to cool them down before you head out to the deck. Maybe they shouldn't be ice cold, but colder is OK.

Watch for me up on the roof deck from now till Labor Day, I hope. I'll be scanning the horizon for tasty white wines a fish could live in and big red wines that aren't afraid of open flame.