It looks as if what he needs a wine palate - he doesn't want one, because he has existed without one so far and doesn't know what he is missing, but he obviously needs one.
Not quite right. Most Californian and Australian wines are superior to the majority of the French wines that you will see on a supermarket shelf. Unfortunately for Jim hypothesis, the French have been making wines for some 2000 years now, and they have found some places that can grow absolutely superb wine grapes. Around 1850, after people had been keeping records of auction prices for wine for about 150 years, these places got identified as producing Grand Cru and Premier Cru wines, and few Australian and Californian producers can compete against those wines.
You *can* do without them, but you don't *need* to look at Rembrandt's paintings either.
True. Sassicaia is only rated as a vino de tavola under the - crummy - Italian classification system, but happens to be one of the great wines. And I do like Amarone.
Naoussa Boutari - which contains a fairly high proportion of cabenet sauvignon. I've drunk it in Athens, and bought it in Cambridge U.K. but you rarely see it outside Greece.
And who needs two legs when you can hop around on one.