Drink Pink

IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE, A SURE SIGN THAT THE SEASON FOR alfresco dining has come around again is the broom flowering extravagantly on every rugged hillside; in New England, it's the homey scent of lilacs that beckons. When it comes to choosing wines to accompany the season's normally informal but occasionally elegant meals, you can scarcely do better than to follow the French example and pour something cool, crisp, refreshing - and pink.

Fragrant, fruity, bone-dry Provencal roses still fly well below American wine radar, but it's a mystery why they should. Versatile, food friendly, cheery, and absolutely unpretentious, they keep excellent company with any number of warm-weather dishes and obviate the need to think about serving red with one course and white with another.

Consider the juicy, fragrant, strawberry-tinged current release of the Mas de Gourgonnier Les Baux de Provence ($15), for example, which we found paired equally well with Peter Wheeler's appetizer of warm goat-cheese-and-olive spread on pita chips and with his second course of shrimp and linguica kebabs. We also loved the 2005 Chateau Mourgues du Gres Costieres de Nimes "Les Galets Roses" ($14), a pink with a somewhat sturdier build and an emphasis on soil flavors - plenty big enough for the grilled steak bruschetta. The 2005 edition of Chateau Roquefort "Corail" Cotes de Provence ($16) - our pick of the pink last year - is a little lighter than in 2004 but hasn't lost one bit of its blushing charm.