If you decide to discover wine on your own there are many disadvantages you must face:

1.) Reading several books on wine will still not prepare you on which wines to buy. the whole process is experimentation and that winds up costing several, several hundreds of dollars and several hours spent staring blankly into the shelves of your local Wine Country. 

2.) If you don't have parents that drink wine or don't happen to know at-least one seasoned connoisseur on the topic it's hard to know what to expect from a perfect Merlot, or know when you have a corked wine or a foxy wine. 

3.) If you don't go to wine tastings you will not learn what the difference between a French Cabernet Sauvignon and a Californian one. Waiters, Bartenders and Wine shop owners always push you to buy the more expensive wines, whereas in tastings they only bring you what they think is the best (and many times the wines are under $20) 

Being the strong proponent of education that I am, I had to jump through hoops to get into the Wine Insights course Rutgers offers to seniors who are over 21. 

but luckily the University of California, Irvine Extension is offering a new online course: "A Sommelier's Secret Guide to the Wine List: Wine and Food Galore", which is a very reasonable course on not just the foundations of wine (the vinification process, various grape species etc.) but you get to apply what you learn to the real world immediately by learning how to talk about wine with a waiter at a restaurant -without mispronouncing the wine labels. 

Classes run between May 18th to June 14th. (And they're online so you don't even have to worry about commuting your butt anywhere!)