Anything But Chardonnay: The Grape You Swore You’d Never Drink Again

Everyone has that one grape they’ve banished. “I don’t drink Merlot.” “Anything but Chardonnay.” “Pinot Gris? No, thanks.” The words sound decisive, like a hard-earned lesson from experience — but most of the time, they’re not. They’re just prejudice in a glass. Somewhere along the way, a style got popular, got abused, got turned into a caricature of itself — and a whole grape was sentenced to exile.

The most famous victim, of course, is Merlot. For decades it was the darling of soft, round red wines — supple, generous, forgiving. Then it got overplanted, overmarketed, overdone. By the late ’90s, Merlot had become shorthand for mediocrity: supermarket plush, no backbone, easy drinking for people who didn’t “really like wine.” Then Sideways came out, and one neurotic fictional man managed to nearly destroy an entire grape’s reputation by shouting “I’m not drinking any fucking Merlot!”

And just like that, everyone thought they were smarter than Merlot.

The same thing happened to Chardonnay. Once the queen of white wine, adored for its versatility, it became the poster child of oak abuse. California winemakers went through a phase where Chardonnay tasted less like fruit and more like melted butter on toast. It was rich, heavy, unsubtle — and it sold like crazy. Until people got tired of it and decided the grape itself was to blame. The pendulum swung, and “Anything But Chardonnay” became a slogan of sophistication — the equivalent of saying, “I know better now.”

But do we?

Blaming the grape is like hating an entire language because you once met someone who spoke it badly. Grapes are raw material; style is human. Merlot can be soft and plush from Napa, or structured and dark from Saint-Émilion. Chardonnay can taste like pineapple custard from California or like flint and lemon from Chablis. Pinot Gris can be dull and sweet, or razor-sharp and mineral. It’s not the grape’s fault — it’s what we’ve done to it.

Prejudice in wine comes from the same place it always does: overexposure, laziness, ego. Once you’ve formed an opinion that feels clever, you stop tasting. You stop being surprised. You stop listening. And that’s the real loss — not to the grape, which doesn’t care, but to you, who no longer does.

People love to draw lines in the sand because it makes them feel like connoisseurs. “I don’t drink New World wines.” “I only drink natural.” “I can’t stand Riesling.” But wine doesn’t reward rigidity; it punishes it. The moment you think you’ve figured it out, something will come along to prove you wrong — a bottle that humbles you, quietly, completely. A glass of Merlot that smells like violets and graphite, and suddenly you’re rethinking everything.

That’s the beauty of wine: it forgives our arrogance with generosity.

Every grape, no matter how maligned, has its truth — if you’re willing to meet it on its own terms. The prejudice isn’t really about the wine. It’s about us. It’s about our need for certainty, our fear of being wrong, our desire to sound like we know what we’re talking about. But the best drinkers — the real ones — aren’t the ones with the firmest opinions. They’re the ones still curious enough to change their minds.

So if you’ve sworn off a grape, open one tonight. A Merlot from Pomerol, a lean Chardonnay from Burgundy, a dry German Riesling if you think you hate sweetness. Drink it slowly, without your old story running interference.

You might discover that what you hated was never the grape — it was your certainty.