A) drink lots of wine. Remember that to get the health benefits of red wine you must consume at least five glasses a day. That's easy to remember: 1 bottle for each adult in the house, and a half-bottle (aka a "split") for each child.
B) Start with cheap wine. You want australian stuff? As good a place as any to start, I suppose. Spend two weeks drinking nothing but $5 shiraz. Then work your way up in quality. Only by familiarizing yourself with the most base can one recognize excellence. This logic has worked for countless leaders of religious cults; it should work for drinking wine as well.
C) A pretentious wine shop has tons and tons of bottles of wine of all types, and usually some wine clerk who'll steer you towards whatever crap she or he likes. Generally it's a he, and generally he likes crappy wine. In fact, of all those bottles in his shop only a few of them are actually worth the price. Most of the others are there so he can brag to his buddies on the internet chat rooms that he has the "largest variety of *****ty Rhone ripoffs in the lower midwest". A good wine shop has much fewer different types, but something good at every price and style you want. And the guy who runs the place drinks each of the wines he sells, and he drinks them regularly, preferably during business hours.
D) When the clerk hands you a $20 bottle of wine, examine the label carefully until you find the part that says "Alcohol 12 percent by volume." Look at that print, scratch your head, then turn to the clerk and say: "hmmm.. so that comes out to a buck sixty-seven per percent, eh?"
E) Don't buy the hype that says "Free wine tastings aren't worth it -- go to one of those $10/$15/head private tastings that wine shops offer". Are you crazy? What part of FREE don't you understand? And $10/$15 is only the beginning of the cost. In addition, you have to listen to some pompous windbag making up crap about velvety mouthfeels, tannin superstructures and a hint of outhouse on the troisieme gout. I mean, you can't just take your date, your wine, and go out and talk about something interesting.
