This summer, when I asked “Should wine bloggers write about wines they don’t like?” the subsequent dialog and debate led to a lot of soul searching at casa Parzen.

In one of the threads that grew in the wake of a follow-up post, Eric the Red — the Solomon of wine writing and blogging in my view — wrote that:

As for saying negative things, reporters, critics and bloggers cannot ignore them. Yes, in my wine panel columns we list our 10 favorite wines. But I always address problems that we found in the wines, even if I don’t go through them bottle by bottle. And I generally do mention particular bottles if they are well known and highly regarded.

I took his guidance to heart: yesterday, over at the Houston Press, I posted about a “well known and highly regarded” wine that made me gag (literally).

Of course, I couldn’t and didn’t say gag but I’ve taken the leap into negativity.

Snowcone, a wine blogger based in Houston, commented:

Confession: I hate oaked Chardonnay. There are one or two that occasionally strike my fancy, but I look for unoaked wherever I go. (There’s a great one from Knapp Winery–in the FLX [Finger Lakes], natch!) My husband loves the stick o’butter/2×4 variety, and it’s the only place where our wine palates diverge.

Click here for the post. Thanks for reading!

Above, from left: George Taber, Wei Ran Chen, Gregory dal Piaz, and Franco Ziliani.

There’ a lot of grooving stuff happening here in Brescia at the European Wine Bloggers Conference but yesterday’s show stopper was lion-hearted author George Taber’s keynote address where he told the group of 216 wine bloggers: “In my view, the wine writing establishment — Robert Parker and so forth — has sold out.”

He was answering a question posed by Evan Dawson (below, left, with my fellow Texas Katie Myers) who had asked George to address ways that a journalist can distance himself from his subject and maintain her/his objectivity.

“By and large,” George said in his talk on storytelling this morning, “the Robert Parkers and Wine Spectators do nothing else but cheerlead.”

Wow… no regrets, coyote… there it is, right there, for all to see… and the declaration was made by an authority on wine and wine writing whose gravitas would be challenged by few…

Organizers Ryan and Gabriella Opaz and Robert McIntosh (above, from left) have done a super job here in Brescia. There’s seamless, high-speed WiFi throughout the Museum, Church, and Monastery of Santa Giulia where the conference is being held (in Italy! unbelievable!), things are running nearly ontime (also remarkable for Italy), and there’s a great energy and sense of collegiality that makes everyone feel welcomed and happy to be here.

More later… Stay tuned…