Australian wine has it all. While benchmark estates maintain their trademark style and high quality from vintage to vintage, a spirit of innovation across this vast continent’s many winegrowing areas is inspiring greater freshness and more complex aromatics.

Americans will be celebrating Beaujolais Nouveau Day with fewer bottles to go around this year. A late and dramatically reduced harvest—like several regions in France, Beaujolais experienced its smallest in decades—combined with shipping delays that made it incredibly difficult to get the wine across the Atlantic in time, resulted in many producers choosing not to send much, or any, Nouveau at all.

For wine drinkers in the U.S. (who consume more Nouveau than any country except Japan) the annual release of the barely two-month-old wine has the added symbolism of ushering in the holiday season, as it arrives just in time for Thanksgiving

Chardonnay is the Golden State's most popular and widely grown white grape. And if you're looking to taste some of California's most affordable and high-quality versions, the wines in this week's selection are hard to beat.