Is drinking wine a pleasure reserved solely for city slickers?
I believe that the understanding and pleasures to be found from wine contains a certain aura of mystery to it and for many of those who weren't brought up in social circles that casually embrace wine as the drink of choice can find the subject of wine to be very intimidating.
Which is of course a stupid attitude to take. If you think you like something you should go and embrace it, overcome the fear of looking stupid, try different wines and be sure to learn from your experience. Life is far too short not to pick and pluck at your culinary desires and ambitions.

And if you were to think that the cost of wine is a barrier that holds you back....think again.

Wine that is valued at hundreds or even thousands of pounds is a complete and utter waste of money. Indeed wine valued at these ridiculous sums of money are purely for the idiotic with more money than sense. In today's market you can get excellent (and I do mean excellent) bottles of wine for as cheap as three or four pounds. And what is even more important to realise is that the difference in quality between an excellent bottle of wine at three pounds and an excellent bottle of wine at sixty pounds is negligible, I personally do not believe that the difference in monetary value reflects the difference of quality. Now bearing this in mind I believe that it is of the utmost stupidity to blow thousands of pounds on a bottle of wine which only contains enough for three glasses of wine! (Now the rich and wealthy client that casually fritters his or her money might go on about how exquisite it tastes, but if you were to compare the taste with that of an excellent sixty pound bottle of wine you'd probably be hard pressed to explain where your thousands of pounds were going.)

The quality of wine has dramatically escalated over the past two decades, with today's understanding and production techniques good quality wine can now be mass produced and sold for exceptionally low prices. So never, ever be tricked into thinking that price will always and consistently reflect quality.

So if we now understand that good quality wine can be purchased at manageable sums perhaps the only other thing that stops us from boldly ordering a bottle of wine in public is our assumed ignorance. We fear that we might make a fool of ourselves, we fear the arrogant and pushy sommelier in stuffy restaurants, we fear the well-manicured tones of the upper classes who order their wines with studied indifference and a casual wave of their hand.
Ready for the big suprise...its all a fallacy.
Those well dressed, loud spoken individuals you see in restaurants boldly ordering a bottle of wine with a detached air of self-importance more often than not talk complete and utter nonsense. It amazes me the amount of brazen idiots who fumble their order with self-conceited arrogance, they utter nonsensical ramblings in the hope of impressing. The only thing that ever impresses me is that their arrogance is only out matched by their ignorance.

Sommeliers are there to help you, if they go out of their way to make you feel uncomfortable or they push the most expensive bottle of wine your way, then simply talk to the manager who will only be too happy to put the culprit in his place. Do not be pushed around, you are out for a good meal and a good time, if the sommelier can't do his job then he shouldn't be serving you.

So understanding all of this the only thing that holds you back from ordering with confidence is your lack of understanding. Which is only too easily remedied.

Go out and buy a book on wine and armed with this and a couple of bottles of different wine spend an enjoyable night at home and educate yourself. The most important thing to learn is your palate, learn what you do and do not like. Match this with twenty minutes of reading and you'll more than match any loud mouthed idiot that fumbles his way around a restaurant.