There is nothing like actually working in the wine business to convince you that this liquid diamond has lost its luster (except perhaps a three bottle Chardonnay hang over, but that is just part and parcel of the dream).
I am continually amazed at the people who can sit and pontificate for hours about wine: How it looks... is it brick, red, salmon, amber, garnet, browning, ruby, purple, inky, blood like? How it smells...is it blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, boysenberry, strawberry, cherry berry, grapey? How it tastes...leathery, smoky, chocolaty, brambly, peppery, saddled pony? How much it costs, who rated it, when and where, who the winemaker was, what type of dirt is was grown in, at what altitude and how the wind was blowing when it was picked.
It seems, like most of human drama, most people - when it comes to the fruit of the vine- forget the basics. It is grape juice. It is a squished grape that has been poisoned. Period.
How wine got so romanticized, I have no idea, but I truly would like to meet the first person who held a glass up to the light and said "My, this presumptuous little draught is highly complex and terribly misunderstood, I think I will make it difficult to understand and scary to drink", and pop him right in the nose... and we know it was a him, simply because only a man ignored at a party could believe that if he talked about a beverage he would seem interesting.