Go ahead, put a couple ice cubes in your rosé this summer.

It's shaping up to be a hot summer. We saw a heat wave in the Bay Area this week: It reached 101 in San Jose, 105 in Santa Rosa. Even San Francisco Airport set a record, according to Chronicle reporting, of 98 degrees on Tuesday. All signs point to high temps continuing through August.

Since I don't have air conditioning at my house (I don't know anyone who has air conditioning in San Francisco), I've responded to the heat wave by making chilled noodle salads for dinner and keeping the windows open at night. And, of course, drinking cold wine.

In balmy times like these, it feels like wine can never be cold enough. Just having it in your glass for a few minutes can take a wine from delightfully frosty to wan and lukewarm. Desperate times call for desperate measures. And so I'm here to tell you: When it's this hot out, it's OK to get some ice cubes involved in your wine.

Ice cubes would not be my first choice, to be clear. If you have 20 minutes to spare before starting aperitivo hour, stick the bottle in your freezer — that will go a long way. To speed that process up, wrap the bottle in a wet dish towel before it goes into the ice box. If you have a chiller bucket that's been frosting in your freezer, even better. Bring it to your patio and set the bottle in it while you're drinking.

But if those options aren't possible — or, maybe, if you just feel like it — then go ahead, drop some ice cubes in your glass.

The basic reason why this is fine is that sometimes, depending on the wine (more on that later), an excessively warm temperature will make it taste worse than a little bit of dilution will. It's as simple as that.

I'm not the only professional wine drinker who feels this way, apparently. A reader recently wrote to me in response to the obituary for Calera Wine Co. founder Josh Jensen with an anecdote from the newsletter that Jensen used to publish. According to this reader, Jensen recommended putting an ice cube into a glass, swirling it for one minute, then removing it.

The reader investigated this effect by measuring the temperature difference before and after the ice cube swirl. After 60 seconds, the reader said, the wine's temperature dropped 10 degrees.

Though I wasn't able to verify the anecdote from the Jensen newsletter, I endorse this exercise.

The other reason why I want to express my approval of ice cubes is pragmatic: People like doing it. So let's all just get used to it.

At a wedding I attended a few weeks ago, I met a fellow guest who, upon learning what I do for a living, exclaimed, "I love wine!" Then, quickly, she cringed and added in a hushed tone: "I add ice cubes." I told her I sometimes do, too.

Her confession reminded me of so many other supposed "rules" for drinking wine — like the idea that you're committing some kind of sacrilegious act if you hold a glass by the bowl rather than the stem. Who cares? In this age of the ubiquitous spritz, we're all mixing wine with soda water anyway.

Still, I do have some gentle recommendations (not rules!) for icy drinking. I wouldn't personally add ice cubes to a full-bodied red wine like Cabernet Sauvignon or Syrah — but then again, I wouldn't choose to drink a full-bodied red wine when it's hot outside, period. Whites and rosés, maybe very light-bodied reds, are the ideal candidates here. I admit I probably would steer clear of bottles that are very special to me, like the white Burgundy in my wine fridge that I've been saving for a friend's birthday. Similarly, easy-drinking sparkling wines like Prosecco would be great with a cube, but I wouldn't do it with nice Champagne.

But anyway, on these warm summer nights in the backyard, I'm much more interested in simple, gulpable pink wines — like the sub-$20 bottlings I recommended in a roundup this week — which I don't think an ice cube or two will profane. 

Senior wine critic Esther Mobley joined The Chronicle in 2015 to cover California wine, beer and spirits. Previously she was an assistant editor at Wine Spectator magazine in New York, and has worked harvests at wineries in Napa Valley and Argentina.