Chardonnay. Lots of people love it. Grocery store shelves are jam packed with it. It’s on virtually every restaurant wine list, even the most lacking. And yet, I have never managed to find a Chardonnay that I am crazy about. But, then again, I’m not a big fan of oak, a flavor predominant in most Chardonnays. A little bit of oak fine, even good in some cases, but I typically prefer less woody whites such as Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc. If you’re like me, and don’t enjoy the flavor of oak, then you too probably find yourself staying away from Chardonnay. This doesn’t have to be the case, however. If you are interested in experimenting with Chardonnay, but fear the oak, you have several options. You can always opt for the classic low-oak Chardonnay: White Burgundy. Or, you can test your patience by sorting through all of the California Chardonnays looking for the few that advertise low-oak on their labels. My best recommendation, though, is to seek out Chardonnays from New Zealand and Australia where wine makers favor stainless steel fermentation over oak fermentation resulting in no-oak wines.

This brings us to my wine selection for the week: Kim Crawford 2005 Unoaked Chardonnay. Kim Crawford is one of New Zealand’s most well-known wine makers and this specific wine is a prime example of the unoaked Chardonnays that New Zealand wineries are famous for producing. It’s a very tasty wine. It is noticeably full-bodied, as a good Chardonnay should be. Most of the reviews online describe the wine as tasting of apples with some citrus and tropical fruit flavors. It has some other flavor in there that I, as usual, can’t pin down. It could be the “butterscotch of malolactic fermentation” as it says on the label. Or, it could just be the chardonnay grape itself which I’ve never tasted without oak.

For my winesday meal, I made crab cakes and served them with a butternut squash, potato and parsnip hash and a spinach salad with pear and roasted beets. The wine paired really well with the richness of the crab and the sweetness of the squash. As a side note, I used Trader Joe’s panko (Japanese style breadcrumbs) to coat the outside of my crab cakes. I’ve used other brands of panko before, and they work just fine, but the Trader Joe’s panko is amazing. It is super crisp; each crumb is like a little shard of glass. It makes an excellent crust. I pan-fried my crab cakes in only a couple of tablespoons of oil and they came out so crispy, you would have sworn they were deep-fried.