As cold gloomy winter retreats, most of us find our tastes in wines and foods changing. Winter is a time for hearty stews and casseroles accompanied by heavy red wines, followed by ports or brandies around the fire. With spring and summer, however, our tastes lighten, and we eat more fish, chicken, salads and grilled foods.

To accompany those foods, the ideal wines are light and fresh: whites, rosés and lighter reds.

The common attribute of great spring wines is often price: Spurned by collectors and self-appointed connoisseurs, these lighter wines are left for the rest of us who simply enjoy tasty wines with our meals and with friends.

If you’ve gotten into a rut of drinking Chardonnay, for example, which is hardly surprising since 83 percent of California’s white production is Chardonnay, you might try one of the delightful alternatives newly on the market. Many are crisp and fruity, with little oak to cloak their natural flavors.

Perhaps the most popular is Pinot Grigio (Italian) or Pinot Gris (French; both mean gray), the light member of the pinot family generally made into a crisp dry wine ideal for seafood and many vegetables. A few Pinot Gris or Grigios are chardonnay wantabes, usually unsuccessfully.

Other newly introduced whites from California include Viognier, a perfumy  Rhône varietal that seems to have an identity crisis here, being turned into anything from a light wine to a heavy, oaky Chardonnay imitation. Marsanne and Rousanne are two even less popular Rhônes.

Havens, by contrast, is making a delightful wine from the Iberian Albariño grape, the mainstay from Galicia also used to make Portuguese Vinho Verde.

And of course, the originals of those wines from Europe are great choices, as are many once-indifferent Italian varieties that have undergone a recent renaissance to become pleasant wines: Soave, Vernaccia, Vermentino, Fiano, Verdicchio, Frascati, even Trebbiano.

A lot of very nice wines are now coming from Sicily, where the wine industry are undergoing a massive upgrading. Many have a touch — or a lot — of Chardonnay added, but local grapes like Aglianico, Inzolia (Insolia or Ansonica), Grillo, Grecanico and Catarratto make pleasant quaffing wines to accompany meals. That said, most don’t feature the grape names. Emphasizing the fruit, most see little oak and are often crisp and relatively low in alcohol.

Also coming back are such California whites as Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Gewürztraminer and Riesling, after decades out of favor. All but Sauvignon Blanc often include a touch of sugar to appeal to American tastes and make them better appetizer wines, but that can also mate them better with some foods.

The other great class of spring wines are rosés, discredited by wine snobs, beloved by winemakers and those in the business. Popular all over the Mediterranean as perfect accompaniment for summer meals, they’re generally — and best — made from varieties that excel in warmer climates, for grapes for rosés are picked early or otherwise processed in ways that don’t work well with Bordeaux varietals like cabernet.

My favorites are made from French Rhône, Spanish and Italian varietals, though if they’re imports, they probably won’t say which. The French classics  tend to feature Grenache and Carignan, but following Italian models, many California wineries are now making small quantities of rosés from grapes like Sangiovese, Barbera and Nebbiolo. Unlike Almadén Grenache Rosé of the past, and white Zinfandels, these wines are dry but all need to be served cold.

Of course, the wine world makes many light reds — “light” is often used as a complaint when it can be a compliment. I’d no more want to drink blockbuster Cabernets all the time than eat roast beef at every meal, and the lighter wines can be refreshing instead of cloying. Many Pinot Noirs and Merlots are light, as are Beaujolais and many Italian wines.

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From Senior Connections, February 2002