Eat, Drink & Stay Dry

New items designed to make outdoor life easier:

> Tired of waging a pre-Promethean struggle with stubborn charcoal? Caloric of Topton, Pa., has produced a gas-fired grill that looks like the standard charcoal brazier but uses gas-heated, long-lasting ceramic briquettes. The grill runs off gas cylinders that last all summer or is hooked up directly to the house gas line. The meat still has that cherished charcoal tang, because the tang actually is produced not by the charcoal but by the dripping juices going up in smoke. (Socalled "charcoal-broiled" steaks at restaurants have been cooked with gas-heated briquettes for years.) About $70.

> For the punctilious picnicker and Sunday sailor who loves wine but hates corkscrews, Faye et Cie. of Macon, France, has put vin in a can for 99-c-, is now selling it in six-packs in supermarkets from Los Angeles to Boston. The imbiber's report: no sour grapes. The wine is Beaujolais, one of the few that should be drunk young, and canning arrests the aging process, whereas bottling prolongs it.

> Pitching a tent used to be akin to struggling with an octopus. Now Moss Tents of Ann Arbor, Mich. (P.O. Box 54), has produced the Bubble Tent, which can be zipped effortlessly into place in H min. flat. Carried in an 8-ft. tube attached to the station-wagon rack, it pulls out in one move, pops open like an umbrella, stays aloft by means of fiber glass poles, and sleeps four in airy, mosquito-proof comfort. Cost: $225.

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