Couple of thoughts upon reading this thread.
I, too, do not like the taste of alcohol and feel no real desire to seek it out as a tasty food. I'll admit, though, that I also don't like to consume things that reduce cognitive function, so it's possible I don't like the taste as a side effect, but I rather doubt it.
Now, I do like champagne, but usually only the stuff that costs $150 a bottle. I say this having found out the prices only after I tried the champagne and liked it: since I like it, I want to know what it is. There are probably also expensive champagnes that don't taste as good, I've just never looked for them, but high price does seem to be a necessary condition for good champagne. To be fair to the post's original request, though, I have to admit that I like these champagnes because they are "smooth": they have no alcohol burn and don't smell or taste like they have alcohol in them, so I might as well have sparkling cider.
Finally, note that until the 20th century people drank much larger quantities of alcohol than today because it was needed to make water safer to drink. If you could afford it, adding a little wine or grain alcohol to the water would go a long way towards reducing the chance of infection from water-borne illnesses. So in those times people probably enjoyed the taste because they became accustomed to it early in life, much the way Americans love tomato ketchup and coke although adults from other parts of the world, when introduced to these flavors, often do not.*
*I can't find a source for this, but I know I've heard it several places. Maybe it's just a modern myth?
I also don't have sources to hand, but I'm informed by my brewing+chemist friends that the amount of alcohol in beer is not sufficient to sterilise the liquid.
however the people of ancient times weren't wrong... beer is sterilised (and thus safe to drink) - it's because to make beer, you have to boil the mash. The boiling sterilises it quite effectively.
This article is a deliberate meta-troll. To be successful I need your trolling cooperation. Now hear me out.
In The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You Eliezer talks about asognostics, who have one of their arm paralyzed, and what's most interesting are in absolute denial of this - in spite of overwhelming evidence that their arm is paralyzed they will just come with new and new rationalizations proving it's not.
Doesn't it sound like someone else we know? Yes, religious people! In spite of heaps of empirical evidence against existence of their particular flavour of the supernatural, internal inconsistency of their beliefs, and perfectly plausible alternative explanations being well known, something between 90% and 98% of humans believe in the supernatural world, and is in a state of absolute denial not too dissimilar to one of asognostics. Perhaps as many as billions of people in history have even been willing to die for their absurd beliefs.
We are mostly atheists here - we happen not to share this particular delusion. But please consider an outside view for a moment - how likely is it that unlike almost everyone else we don't have any other such delusions, for which we're in absolute denial of truth in spite of mounting heaps of evidence?
If the delusion is of the kind that all of us share it, we won't be able to find it without building an AI. We might have some of those - it's not too unlikely as we're a small and self-selected group.
What I want you to do is try to trigger absolute denial macro in your fellow rationalists! Is there anything that you consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic, and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of rationalizations in other people? Yes, I pretty much ask you to troll, but it's a good kind of trolling, and I cannot think of any other way to find our delusions.