My Experience With Wine or the Lack There Of

Being 21 for only 6 months now, I haven't had the opportunity to really explore the world of wine. I'm looking forward to broaden my scope of wine, open up my pallet to different flavors and styles, because right now I mostly purchase or order on the sweeter side of things. I actually often prefer beer, because well beer for me is a little easier to decipher probable flavor content based off of a menu about it's origin and maker. I would think wine would be similar, but I haven't had the chance to really get that far with it.

I did attend a large wine tasting event right when I turned of age, and it was really fun, however, some of the wineries I felt sent out people who didn't really know what they were talking about. Obviously I'm not an expert, but they weren't being very helpful, besides this is sweet, this is dry, etc and maybe that's because of the largeness of the event, but I thought it might have been nice to have someone explain the different wines a little better than they did.

Tid Bit: My past experiences (under 21) of wine "tasting" was really buying a bottle and drinking it all in one night, not really caring about the depth, the body or smell of it, just as long as it tasted good, I was good to go. Now on the other hand I'm more developed not only as a person but a drinker as well, and look forward to trying new things.

One of my biggest passions in life is food, well cooking. So I really would like to get into how pairings happen and what about certain wines make them a good choice for certain proteins or dishes. It would be very useful in the future, perhaps when hosting dinner parties, or even out with coworkers for a nice meal. From what I've heard pairings can be really tricky and can often be great or really bad. So I'm definitely hoping to learn about that side of things.

But. . . to be more particular on the other things I want to learn about it would have to be. . .
How the aging process works with different wines?
Is the longer it's age always make the wine better?
What type of barrels are used with certain wines?
What makes a good year for wine and what makes a bad year?
Year on a wine is significant to what?

Things of this nature most interest me, and I look forward to learning more!