Dunno if I would.
In mainstream US culture, wine has class associations: the bourgeois drink wine; the working class drinks beer.
I don't particularly like this association, because it generally implies:
A) if you drink wine, people see you as a pretentious bourgeois snob.
B) Many wine stores are run by and cater to pretentious bourgeois snobs. ( note that it is possible to be a bourgeois snob without being pretentious. Pretention is simply not having the goods to back it up).
C) A major chunk of the wine market caters to the pretentious bourgeois (=yuppy) image.
What does C mean?
Well, a lot of Americans like the idea of wine. That is, that wine is the stuff that bourgeois folks drink; it's a status symbol. But there's just one problem: they don't like the taste.
So you get things like supersweet blush wines and chardonnays that are so heavily oaked (or more likely injected with oak chips) you can't taste the grape juice beneath all the sweetness. I mean, if you like these things, great; but if what you're looking for in a wine is a Rum and Coke, by all means, drink a rum and coke instead.
The other effect is that wine in the US has its own set of fashion trends, to the degree that grape producers will dig up old vines and replace them with something more "Saleable". Why does Sauvignon Blanc cost less than chardonnay? Is it just the oaking that makes the difference? it's also the demand.
Bottom Line: if you don't like the taste of it; don't drink it. nobody likes a pretentious wine snob, just as nobody likes a M.D. with a PPL, tons of flight time and no clue how to fly.
edit: you know, I think this is a rare O'Club thread in which there's pointed opinions yet pretty much universal agreement.
