Let me preface this - I don’t consider myself a wine snob by any means.

My wife and I went to wine country a year or so ago and went to some wineries to do tasting tours. We learned quite a lot. For instance, I can now taste the difference between good wine and bad. It basically comes down to the complexity of the flavors. If the wine is good, you can distinguish multiple flavors. If it is not, it just tastes like wine.

As for why people care about where the grapes were grown and that mumobojumbo it is so they can try and correlate their tastes to things they know about wine. “Oh I oiked that bottle - it was a so and so from wherever made from this interesting blend of grapes” so they try other wines from that area or made with similar grapes.

Real connoisseurs can tell the difference. Most make shit up and can’t identify whether a wine is white or red in a blind taste test. Everyone else is just looking for something to snoot about while drinking with their buddies and show off how expensive their supposed tastes are.

Me, personally, I like “earthy” red wines. I don’t really know what that means specifically - that’s what the sommelier said when I told him which of the bottles I preferred and the reasons why I enjoyed those particular wines. Ok. That being said, I’ll drink boxed wine and sometimes I’ll spend $60 on a nice bottle to share on a special occasion.