Everyone here has expressed valid points, and I agree with all of them in some way or another. Personally, I mostly make beer, but I am grateful for the practices and instincts that I gained from making wine, and I use grapes in much of the beer that I make.
I started out making wine before beer because, frankly it seemed simpler, and in a way I still feel that it is. You don’t have to know anything about chemistry, physics or microbiology to make wine. You can go all out on the chemicals, enzymes, lab yeast if you want, or you can just smash the grapes and let them do their thing. Really, given the ph, tannins, potential alcohol content, and microflora of grapes, they seem perfectly engineered to turn into an impressively balanced enjoyable and stable beverage with relatively little intervention. I know that saying that will likely prompt someone to make a response about natural wine being horrible and turning into vinegar, but people all over the world have shown that with a little experience and attention to detail, you can make excellent, surprisingly clean tasting wine without any chemicals (including sulfites) or lab equipment (although I would at least recommend a hydrometer).
The problem with wine is that in order to make really good wine, it is Absolutely vital to have good grapes that have been carefully grown, harvested, and handled post harvest. That can be hard to come by. I currently live in Iowa, and I make some wine, but it’s not going to taste like a Napa Cab no matter how hard you try. In my opinion, the grapes I can get really only work well for funkier things like Pet Nat or wine/beer hybrids. So to make consistently good wine, you can’t always just follow a recipe or a set of basic directions. You have to be flexible, observant, and willing to make quick decisions about harvesting, pressing, bottling, whether or not to add sulfites, etc. and you need to be willing to do those things when the wine needs it, not when it is convenient. Clearly, simpler doesn’t always mean easier. The primary reason I say beer is more complicated, is because it does require more human engineering and intervention. The grains aren't going to malt themselves, the mash water isn’t going to find the right temp on it’s own. Since mashing and boiling will generally kill all yeast and bacteria in the wort, this requires one to inoculate the wort with the microbes necessary for fermentation.
It is lamentable that there is such a divide, between wine makers and brewers, because both groups can be frustratingly narrow minded and dogmatic about their processes, but when you dabble in both worlds, you realize many commonly held ideas are either untrue or at least greatly oversimplified.
Sorry for turning this into a book. I’m sure someone else here could have said all of that a lot more succinctly.
