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I really wonder how much of the suspicion of wine comes from the class-conflict accoutrements and marketing.

I used to be a big wine skeptic. It seemed pretentious, overpriced, and boring. The people who liked it were the kind of people I disliked. Most of the places in the town I grew up in all had the same "big reds" at ridiculous prices. Wine was the thing that cost $12 that you paid $60 for at the local steakhouse to look important.

Then, I moved to a lesser-known wine-producing state and started actually trying wine. It took some time--and there were more than a few encounters with snobs and commercial puffery that made me want to rethink it--but it soon opened up into a huge world that I had no idea about before. It was far more fascinating and enduring than previous interests in whiskey or craft beer.

It's a pity that wine gets such a pretentious reputation. It's a fascinating blend of chemistry, geology, geography, and culture that at its heart is an agricultural enterprise.