This California chardonnay is your best bet for Thanksgiving dinner

If you have to pick only one wine to serve with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, a rich but balanced white wine like this California chardonnay will be your best bet. Not only do white wines have an inherent advantage over reds for pairing to white meats like poultry and smoked pork, but they are also a better match for the traditional sauces and trimmings associated with the holiday feast.

Sugar is the dominant theme for most of the classic dishes, from sweet cranberry sauce and honey glaze on the meats to vegetables and starches like glazed carrots and candied yams.

This wealth of sweetness is what makes the harvest table such a challenge for red wines, which fare best with foods driven more by salt and dairy fats than those dependent on sugar and spice. White wines are typically a little less dry, which helps them partner with sweeter sauces, and because they have no tannin from grape skins, they do not leave the palate feeling leathery with these foods either. That’s why chardonnays from warm places like California’s Monterey make such marvelous Thanksgiving wines. Loaded with flavors of spiced apples and butter pecan ice cream, they provide just the right accent for your harvest bounty.

$12.99; 14.4% alcohol

PLCB Item #97766

Sale price through Nov. 27 — regularly $15.99

Also available at:

Cheers Wine & Spirits in Voorhees, $13.99, cheers-nj.com; and Total Wine & More in Claymont, Del., $15.99, totalwine.com.