I was allowed to try sips of alcohol as a young child (not that young, though). I think knowing what alcohol tastes like is a pretty useful thing to know, for example to detect a spiked drink.

Oh please, kids will detect alcohol as a foreign substance and will hate it, nobody has to teach them that. And spiked drinks are usually alcohol based drinks spiked with other substances. Good luck detecting that!!

Not sure why you get downvoted without any arguments but to add support for your position, I had a similar experience growing up.

I didn’t want to drink before high school gatherings where there was peer pressure and I stopped shortly after that.

I see so many first-world westerners cringe at the idea of letting your child have freedom and make mistakes on their own. Tracking, parental controls everywhere, neighbors snitching when your child is out and about exploring the world, etc, etc.