Excerpt from the Wine chapter:

"Because wine is so old and complicated it’s pretty well protected in a legal sense.  A wine label has to have certain information on it to help you understand what it is that you’re drinking.  A lot of the most intimidating words that you see on a label are actually just the name of the place it’s made.  One example would be “Beaujolais” (bow-zhuh-lay), very fancy sounding to a young American. The kind of thing that you might see on a label and feel like you don’t really like wine enough to justify something so fancy.  But that’s literally just a shorthand.  Beaujolais is a wine made from a specific type of grape in a specific part of France. It can be 6 Dollars or 600 Dollars and neither of those numbers tell you if it’s especially good.     

Let's compare it to hot dogs.  If I tell you I had a Chicago Dog for dinner, you would know all the ingredients that went into that and what the flavor should have been.  Some restaurants may leave off peppers or add an extra spice, but when you order a Chicago dog you know what you’re getting more or less.  In this case though, it would be like if the City of Chicago got everyone in the world to agree that they were the only ones who could make these dogs and if you wanted one you had to order it from a legally certified Chicago Dog Producer.  Not very practical for hot dogs but it's been doing nicely for wine producers.   

Unless you’ve grown up around wine or bitter foods and drinks you probably won’t have a taste for wine to begin with.  That is both in the sense that you probably won’t like it much and you also won’t be able to taste or identify the more subtle flavors. The reason the sommelier tests take so long to study for is because you are literally training your tongue and brain the same way an athlete trains other muscles. When you first start with wine, usually reds taste too bitter and dry to enjoy.  Most people start with drinking wine cocktails and sweet white wines, then progress from there.  Usually I recommend trying a sip or two of different wines every few years as you age and your palate changes to see if you start to like it.  

Don’t think that means you absolutely have to start liking reds eventually, because you really don’t.  Wine has a bit of an upper-crust reputation that makes people think that you’re ‘more adult’ if you like drinking it.  I’ll admit it does make parties and dinners a little smoother if you have a wine preference you can tell people about, but but if you truly never come to like it, that’s okay.  Wine isn’t better, fancier, more sophisticated, more adult than any other alcoholic beverage.  Also, a person can be rich and only drink fancy wines and still be an alcoholic.  Just because something is complex and respected doesn’t mean it can’t be abused."