On a strictly economic front, it weakens the value proposition of dining out. “If you’re in a place where the wine list is extensive, and there’s a sommelier, that’s part of what you’re paying for,” says Urbina. “It’s included in the price.”
Talking about wine with an expert who hasn’t been trained on your speech and thought patterns is an investment that pays dividends, too. The practice not only helps you develop your own sense of taste, but can also make it easier to find glasses and bottles you’ll enjoy in the future.
If you think about wine as another language, enlisting AI to decide what to order—quick, before the somm comes over!—is like cramming for an exam that no one is making you take. But what if you try having a conversation with a native speaker? As anyone who’s ever shopped in a Parisian market using their middle school French can attest, you tend to acquire a lot more fluency from those real-time exchanges, even (or especially) if they’re clumsy.
Good hospitality professionals aren’t judging you, either. “There’s nothing wrong with not knowing anything about wine or not knowing what to order,” says Annie Shi, the co-owner and beverage director of King and Jupiter, and owner of Lei in New York City. “That’s literally what the staff is there for.”
Unlike any AI app, a qualified somm has tasted each bottle on their list and can guide you through its nuances. For instance, maybe you’re eyeing a Georgian Saperavi to pair with your roast lamb. An AI tool can inform you that Saperavi is a tannic red. But the somm can explain why that particular, qvevri-aged bottle is softer and rounder than others.
Gradually, and then suddenly, you’ve learned about the grape variety, Georgia’s winemaking heritage, and how tannins interact with food—all without even realizing you needed to ask.
“That’s the whole point of all of this,” says Chasity Cooper, author of The Wine Conversation Generator. “It’s so important to put our phones down and actually connect with each other and learn from one another.”
After all, we could all stay at home and drink wine by the blue light of our phones. One reason we put on hard pants (MAYBE) and brave the world outside is to soak up the intangible magic of restaurants. When we give AI the night off, we get to have the sorts of experiences that no algorithm can predict. The robots in our phones could never.
