Alcohol from the Outside

I am a non-drinker and a completely uneducated observer of alcohol culture. I've grown up in Utah my whole life, with family that doesn't drink and friends that don't drink. But I've recently become semi-acquainted with this culture, at least enough that I have some observations about it that I would like to throw out there, and be corrected by those who know better.

I have three categories, because they're the only ones I really know. I realize there are others, but my observations of their consumption have been rare to non-existent. So I here I discuss Tequila, Beer, and Wine.

Tequila - My undestanding of Tequila is that it is consumed in shots, is sort of a south-of-the-border drink (ie: mostly from Mexico?), and is usually ideal for situations when the people want to become uninhibited, and quickly.

Beer - I realize the sphere of beer is probably too large to be summed up under just the heading 'beer' but I wouldn't know how to narrow it down beyond the types I've seen on clever TV commercials (ie: light, frost-brewed, Coors, Budweiser, etc.). My impression of beer is that it has a bad reputation for being the lay-person's drink, or only for middle-aged men with large stomachs watching football. But I think it can be much more sophisticated than that, titles like 'pale ale' do not say unsophisticated slob to me. I've come to think of beer as an extremely general term used to describe alcoholic drinks not made from grapes and somehow involving wheat or this mysterious thing called 'hops' which I cannot seem to understand. My impression of beer now is that it is ideal for people at bars because they can drink several without feeling too intoxicated, they're not to expensive, and because beer is the most social drink, and what more social place is there than a bar? I also think beer is a good choice for a casual lunch at a sit-down restaurant, where you might order a cheeseburger but a waiter would serve it and it would come with some sort of gourmet fries or the option of getting a salad. 

Wine - Again, I realize there are so many kinds of wine that an attempt to describe it and its use cases is probably silly, but I have just enough gaps in my knowledge to feel like I can pull this off. Wine is for those who appreciate food, and in some cases aesthetics. It is also a social-aloofness drink, where beer is the "I'm here to party with y'all" drink, wine is the "I'm here to enjoy conversations with people I deem worthy" drink. There is red wine, white wine, bottled wine, boxed wine, and the interesting thing is that each type has some sort of social stigma attached to it, or at least expectations of how it should be used. So I think wine is as much about image or status (demonstrating sophistication by pairing the right wine with the right food, or defying social norms by drinking boxed wine instead of bottled) as it is about enjoyment.

So there's what I think/know about alcohol? Am I way off? Am I close? Anybody who has an opinion, educated or not, I'd love to hear what you think.

PS - I'd like to give a small shout-out to my friends at work who have provided me with most of my education on this subject, both purposefully and inadvertently :)