I have a confession to make. It’s about an embarrassing habit that has earned me the sneers and pitying glances of sommeliers and right-thinking people from Europe to the Caribbean. You see, I love to drink Big California chardonnays. Big, fruity, buttery, oaky, in-your-face, so-over, 90s-style chardonnay.

And I refuse to apologize for it.

Chardonnay always has seemed to be a very loaded sort of wine compared with other varieties. People think they know something about you the instant they hear you order. The central stigma in the U.S. is its alleged association with affluent political liberals. The term “chardonnay-sipping,” usually is paired with other derogatory compound phrases such as “Volvo-driving,” “brie (or sushi)-eating” “running shoe wearing” and less colorful epithets like “snob” and “sissy.” In this formulation, by the way, chardonnay sippers always live in “leafy” neighborhoods.

In the U.K., by contrast, chardonnay has acquired a decidedly down-market connotation, as “the choice of footballer’s wives, more chavvie than classy,” according to one wine newsletter. “Chavvie” evidently is an offensive slang term for a tramp or gypsy. Either way, it’s nothing to be proud of. Chardonnay is not as unfashionable as merlot has been since the movie Sideways came out, but runs a close second.

Among the wine cognoscenti, the big California chardonnay is an object of open condescension and, in many cases, outright rage and condemnation. For purists, the heavy oaking and double fermentation process known as malolactic is regarded as shoddy at best, sacrilegious at worse. Malolactic fermentation uses bacteria rather than yeast and does not commence until the primary fermentation is complete. Its purpose is to reduce acidity and enhance flavor. The influential wine critic Robert Parker is regularly pilloried–in a manner reminiscent of the similar fervent resentment directed against Bill Gates and Microsoft, –for promoting an “opulent” “globalized” style of chardonnay as well as other varietals. In response, many winemakers and wine retailers are shifting to chardonnays that use grapes picked earlier, undergo only partial malolactic fermentation, and use less oak. This, it is said, preserves the delicate and pristine flavor of the grape instead of overpowering it with oak and adulterating it through human manipulation to appeal to crude, unrefined palates such as mine and the footballers’ wives.

The only problem is that it doesn’t really taste as good.

Recently, I have tried to break out of my wine rut. My husband and I vacationed on the French island of St. Bartelemy, enjoying delectable food and warm sunshine. There was only one problem with our otherwise perfect holiday in paradise. There was not a single bottle of California-style chardonnay to be had at any price.

Oh, we tried. The chardonnay grape is the basis for many famous French labels such as Chablis, Pouilly-Fuisse, and Montrachet. We tried many an expensive bottle to try to feed our nasty habit, to no avail. Each one of them to our palates seemed watery, or acidic, or too tart. One afternoon, we even set off on a desperate mission to a huge warehouse literally stacked floor to ceiling with wine. The nice French lady who helped me seemed dumbfounded when I asked if they had any California wine among the thousands of bottles surrounding us. “But….thees is a French island!” she asked, bewildered.

Yes, I patiently, explained, but in the U.S. wine sellers usually offer wine from all over the world to their customers, not just U.S. wines. No, she was sorry, but only French wines were sold on a French island, and seemed honestly confused as to why I would want anything else. Later, when I explained to the proprietor of one of the island’s finest restaurants about my inexplicable craving for California (or Australian–they do it well too) chardonnay, he offered his sincere condolences. We decided to stick to pina coladas and beer for the rest of the trip.

Upon our return, we could hardly wait to open a frosty (yes, we like our wine incorrectly and unfashionably cold, too) Rombauer Carneros chardonnay, which we buy by the case and often to the exclusion of everything else other than the occasional splurge on a Kistler or Newton. For those of you who share my leanings, you absolutely cannot do better than Rombauer. How fitting that such a sexy, muscular and swaggering chardonnay should have been created by a winery founded by a former fighter pilot. No watery French swill here.

Oh, and by the way, I love giant monster, knock your socks off Zinfandels, too. And I’m not apologizing. Robert Parker, call your office.

–Melinda Ledden Sidak is writer living in Washington D.C.