GB- i myself am considered to be the "wine expert" by my crew (tho, to self-proclaim things, i'd call me a wine whore), and am generally the one to "do the honors" with the tasting at the table. this is of course, silly, as i keep telling everyone,
my tongue is not wired to your palate, so we all like what we like. bitter beer, sweet wine, whatever. people should definately do the exploring on their own time, home/whatever, rather than sending stuff back for no reason (v.rude).
any place worth its salt that sells wine by the glass (and i'm including olive garden here, not just hoity-toity places, ok?) will give you a lil taste before they pull you a full one. it's ok to change your mind once or twice at that point. alternately, go hang out at your local liquor/wine shop, as lots of them do scheduled tastings at some point in the week.
ronjohn, i too rarely find wine i don't care for, once in the general ballpark realm of what i feel like at the time...
and jp, that is in fact one of the reasons that some places are going towards foam "corks" or screwcaps (aka "stelvin closures" for peeps that like to avoid the s-word). a wine without a cork cannot get "corked". also, the scarcity of quality cork trees has a good chunk to do with it. don't be scared of the screwcap, plenty of lovely things from australia/new zealand, and almost all of
bonny doon's stuff now comes
sans corkscrew.