Beautifully said, terra.
But do not generalize too much. There is the cynicism that tries to justify inaction, and there is the cynicism that expresses itself as art. The first is, ultimately, a copout. The other creates images that rub one's nose in the hypocrisy that passes for consensual reality.
The Ancients revered their cynics. King Mithradates of Parthia was sure he would be poisoned. So each day he ingested trace amounts of all the known poisons. "Mithradates," as some British poet wrote, "he died old."
Ambrose Bierce defines a cynic thusly, in his "Devil's Dictionary"

CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision

I've had serious damage to one retina, and I assure you it does improve one's vision. But I do need the other eye to get around. So I'm not cynical to a fault.

Note also that Bierce's cynic needs to understand how things ought to be. So in this sense a cynic is a disillusioned romantic.

I like your wine analogy. But if cynicism has a beverage, it is absinthe.

"Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder"--Ogden Nash

In a way, Ogden, in a way.

Love,

oliver