Our Wine Of The Week is a great every day sipping wine – Avalon Winery 2016 Chardonnay. Warm weather is still with us, making this affordable Chardonnay a great sipper on warm evenings and a perfect pair with light fare.

Avalon’s Chardonnay is produced with grapes farmed in Sonoma and Santa Barbara Counties, creating a synergy with the signature features of those two regions. From the south, we get acidity and citrus. Grapes from Sonoma provide a subtle balance with tree fruits and overall balance. I thought I’d need to cool this wine down to the low end of the proper serving temperature range for light white wines, but as I impatiently sipped after dunking the bottle for just a few minutes in an ice bucket, it was fine at a serving temperature typical for heavier white wines. When left to cool further, nothing was lost and the crisp citrus and apple came through nicely with a slight hint of oak.

Check your local grocery store or wine shop for availability, this wine came to Wine Adventure base camp via Diablo Foods in the San Francisco East Bay community of Lafayette for about $9. Also available on wine.com for about $11, click for current price: Avalon 2016 Chardonnay – White Wine

Avalon Winery is a brand produced by Purple Wine + Spirits in Graton, CA (Sonoma County).