How is it that people who know better than to wear tweeds in July can't seem to carry the concept over to choosing a summer-weight red wine? We're not sure, but we've learned to dread the encounter with the outsize zinfandel, beefy shiraz, or fur-bearing cabernet at our neighbors' backyard barbecues. The false step here could well be the idea that the big-flavored foods -- saucy ribs, sausages, blackened chickens -- that come off the Weber on a warm summer weekend need big red wines to stand up to them. Well -- yes and no.

It's true enough that food and wine do best together when there's some correspondence in their relative sizes. Still, a well-balanced wine modest in body and alcohol level (around 12.5 percent) is more than sufficient for most foods that come off the grill if the fruit is persistent and the acidity lively.

Though we're always on the lookout for warm-weather gems, they're not so easy to scout. A light color, which was once a fairly reliable visual guide to the strength of a wine, is no longer so. Today, every winemaker knows how to get color into his wine, if he can't do anything else. What follows are a handful we think pass the test of being red wine's answer to a seersucker suit and a straw boater.

--STEPHEN MEUSE