If the wine world needs changing, what’s broken and how do we fix it?

As we talked to Gary Vaynerchuk, star of WineLibraryTV.com, we asked him to name the three major things he is hoping to see change in the way Americans buy, drink and discuss wine.

1. People have to start trying different things. “People find a wine they like and act as though it will cure cancer. People feel like they drink ‘outside the box,’ but they don’t. There is so much more! We haven’t even tapped into regions like the Czech republic and Brazil.”

2. That whole “Be 1 With Your Pal” thing: Wine consumers need more confidence. People need to accept their own preferences, he says: “People think they’re wrong when they taste a highly rated wine and they think they’re wrong because they don’t like it. I want people to trust their own palates.”

3. People need to share wine more. “I’m surprised and a little frustrated … that there’s not more wine tasting around the country. I feel it should be a requirement. Like getting a driver’s license.” He says this will be a major focus of his program for the next half of the year.

To that end, he hopes to be an example. “My mom taught me to be very real,” Vaynerchuk says. “If wine tastes like a garden hose, I have to say it.”

Vaynerchuk summed it all up beautifully while talking about why wine can be intimidating and how Americans tend to have “low wine self-esteem.” He offered that if wine were a person, it wouldn’t like being fussed about quite so much: “I think wine would much rather be trailer park than be high-rise.”