Wine Conversations: Can AI Replace Sommeliers? (IV)
Who decides? This much I know: it’s not the sommeliers
Welcome to July’s "Wine Conversation", a feature spotlighting a wine-related topic and transforming it into an evolving conversation between multiple wine writers across Substack. This month’s conversation hits particularly close to the bone for me: AI. Love it or loathe it, the damn thing doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. It’s already taking the work of people like me (writers), not to mention developers, designers and even doctors. So it’s no surprise that the wine community is also wondering:
Can AI replace sommeliers?
To catch up on the conversation so far, read
’s introduction to the topic, in which Zach and Isaac argue that in a field so deeply rooted in sensory experience and social culture, AI cannot outperform a human sommelier. Chastity Cooper is in vehement agreement in her follow-up post on , while notes that AI is essentially plagiarizing the work of humans and contends that connection and resistance are key.What exactly does a sommelier do?
I’ll preface my opinion by saying that I am not a sommelier: I don’t work in wine service at a restaurant or wine bar (although I have given advice to customers at the wine shop I worked at). I’m coming at this topic primarily as a consumer and as a wine writer: someone who interacts with sommeliers, rather than someone who serves wine. So let’s briefly break down what a sommelier actually does. According to the Sommeliers Choice Awards, activities include:
Development of the wine list
Delivery of wine service to customers on the floor
Training for other wine staff or kitchen staff members
Working alongside the culinary team to create new pairings
What can AI do?
Interestingly, much of the discussion so far has centred around whether AI is able to accurately describe the sensory experience of drinking a wine without being – well – a sentient human. Given that us wine writers are constantly training the large language models in how to describe wines, I would argue that AI has about as much chance of recommending a wine to a customer as a human sommelier does. After all, smell and taste are entirely subjective anyway. Sure, I might taste something that ChatGPT didn’t tell me – but I could say the same about tasting wine with any human being.
Let’s not forget: AI doesn’t exist by itself. It exists because of all the input it’s been fed with. Since humans have been busy populating the internet with useful information for decades (and a fair amount of utter bullshit), it’s no surprise that AI can come up with a decent wine list that takes a range of factors into account, and can make recommendations for successful food pairings. That giant brain holds more data than even the most knowledgeable of sommeliers.
offers proof of this in his post showing just how easy it was to design a wine pairing for The French Laundry’s tasting menu using Notebook AI. His inputs included a detailed wine list, the current tasting menu, pricing constraints and of course the various necessary prompts. It took him ten minutes to come up with the wine pairings and, while I can’t taste the results, at least in principle they look pretty legit.
And what can’t AI do?
Many of us who grew up with the ‘90s manifestations of robots were surprised that AI arrived to take over the thinky jobs – not the physical jobs like collecting the rubbish and bussing dirty dishes. And that’s where (for the time being, at least) I don’t see AI replacing sommeliers. In most restaurants and bars, we still need (and want) a human to come to our table, pour us a glass of wine and have a chat with us.
I recently went to a particular museum café that I used to love. But the café’s staff have now been entirely replaced by a self-service process, from pressing a button on a coffee machine to a self-checkout system at the end. I didn’t see another person in there and it was dismal. I can’t imagine many restaurants and bars following suit, but the role of humans in this scenario doesn’t necessarily involve a whole load of wine expertise. It’s more of a physical job than a cerebral one.
Who stands to benefit from AI?
There are two main parties with an interest in whether AI can replace sommeliers: the customers patronising restaurants and bars, and the managers running those businesses (and managing their budgets).
As a customer, I can see two competing factors in whether I’d be willing to ask AI for wine advice:
In favour of AI: I don’t want to look like an idiot. This is my biggest reason for using ChatGPT in almost any scenario – it never judges me for asking a stupid question, whether it’s about wine, medical issues or pet travel requirements. Confession: I’ve been known to ask AI the dumb question before I approach the sommelier with a more nuanced, specific question.
In favour of humans: I am sick of being on my phone. QR code menus enrage me for the same reason – by the time I’ve made it out of the house to meet friends, the last thing I want is to be distracted by some Instagram notification while I attempt to read a menu or consult ChatGPT on my phone.
From a business point of view, in an ideal world AI would be used to help the sommelier, rather than replace them. After all, you’d still want a human to taste those AI-generated wine pairings and verify that they work before putting them in front of paying customers.
But we know from experience in other industries that this often isn’t the economic decision taken. I’ve seen enough examples of text generated by AI that clearly hasn’t been verified and polished by a qualified copywriter to know that where time and money are concerned, shortcuts will be taken. And while The French Laundry probably won’t be replacing its sommeliers, there are plenty of other restaurants without that reputation or those revenues that will.
The conclusion
This is what it comes down to. If the customer is happy to get their information from AI (and can stand being on their phone long enough to do it), and if the person paying the salaries or holding the budget thinks that good enough is good enough, then it doesn’t matter how much wine professionals wring their hands and bang on about storytelling. Let’s not conflate how we personally feel about AI with what AI can actually do. Just because we don’t want AI to take our jobs doesn’t mean it won’t. We’re not the ones who get to decide – it’s those who hold the purse strings and the power who do.
And on that rather pessimistic note, I’ll hand over to
who has told me she’ll be interviewing someone at the forefront of the AI curve – perhaps she’ll have something more positive to say!
AI will easily be able to recommend "standard" wine/food pairings, as well as some well known "deviations" from the norm, viz Evan Goldstein. However, there is no space for creativity and flair, say when putting a list together, using small "undiscovered" producers and trying to surprise your customers with joyous new discoveries.
AI will simply yet again narrow the market and play it safe, pandering to the so called majority, with big chains using this as an excuse to further screw suppliers and limit consumer choice. Effectively the usual big business race to the lowest common denominator...
Great post Vicky. You captured the inherent struggle perfectly. The coming AI wave will change everything. Here's hoping your ideal scenario comes to pass. I'll dust off my rose-colored glasses for my post on Saturday. Cheers!