A Report From Wine Explorer Diego Samper – AI in wine service?
Paris, France
My first job was at a summer camp. The kids were very young, and I was hardly more than a kid myself. The pay was bad, the sun was hot, and the afternoons felt endless. What I really learned was that responsibility is heavier than you imagine.
My second job was at a hostel front desk. The money wasn’t great, but it gave me the time to study and, more importantly, to listen. Travelers came through with stories from places I could hardly find on a map. They carried the smell of airports and sea crossings on their clothes. That desk was a classroom no school could offer.
None of it was glamorous, but those jobs gave me more than textbooks ever did. They were the first steps on the knowledge ladder. You learned what you liked, what you hated, and that most of life’s skills are built by doing, not by sitting in a classroom.
Now, fast forward to something as simple as tasting wine in a supermarket. I’ve done it. A cube of cheese, a sliver of ham, a splash of Cabernet. Sometimes the product is good. But too often the delivery is colder than the wine itself. A teenager reading a script. A part-timer mumbling through bullet points. It has all the warmth of an air hostess reciting the safety instructions before takeoff.
We’ve all been there. It’s not that the wine is bad. It’s that the moment is lifeless.
And this is where technology wants to step in…
Recently, I saw the pitch of a company selling the future of restaurants: an AI “sommelier.” A system that updates menus overnight, keeps inventories perfect, suggests pairings, even gives waiters pronunciation guides and talking points.
The promise is seductive. No more mistakes. No more Sassicaia listed when it’s already gone. No more blank stares from a new server who doesn’t know the difference between Barolo and Beaujolais.
At home, I’ll admit, AI is useful. It helps me sort through notes, translate a menu, find patterns. As an orientation tool, it works. But in a restaurant? I worry.
Because without the need to train young waiters, without the push to stumble through their first real wine service, we risk cutting off the bottom rung of that ladder. The kid who starts carrying trays and clearing glasses might never get the chance to be curious about tannins, vintages, or grape varieties. Why should they, if the screen already tells them what to say?
In any real company, the same principle applies. A junior analyst becomes a senior not because they memorized a manual, but because they worked through mistakes, solved problems, and were mentored by people further up the ladder. Some job responsibilities will evolve with AI, and that is fine.
But the parts that require human touch and delivery, the judgment call, the way you read a room, the story you tell, those cannot be outsourced. Take those away and the ladder collapses. You do not just lose future sommeliers. You lose future leaders in every field. AI can deliver answers, but it cannot replace the messy path that turns answers into judgment.
But that’s where passion starts. Someone pours you a glass, explains badly but honestly, and suddenly you care. You ask questions. You read. You learn. That process matters, because the knowledge in those AI databases came from somewhere. From winemakers, sommeliers, and writers who built it bottle by bottle.
If we stop renewing that chain of experience, what happens to the future of wine knowledge? Who will write the next book, discover the next pairing, or teach the next generation? Without critical thinking, without those messy first encounters, we’re left with scripts. And scripts don’t create anything new.
We should optimize the things that keep people alive. Airplanes. Hospitals. Shipping lanes. There, efficiency is progress. But wine is not supposed to be optimized into submission. It is supposed to be discovered, with clumsy enthusiasm and human warmth.
I’d rather have the awkward waiter who admits he tried the bottle last week and thought it tasted like cherries, or like home, or like nothing he’d ever had before. That moment isn’t data. It’s discovery. And discovery is the only way wine stays alive.
So yes, use AI at home. Let it help you choose a Tuesday-night bottle or translate a menu when you can’t. But don’t let it replace the fumbling, funny, sometimes painful first steps that make us fall in love with what we do—whether that’s wine, or the careers we stumbled into by accident.
Wine is not a script. It’s a story. And it deserves to be told by people still learning how to tell it.
A cold delivery makes even good wine forgettable. But a warm, human one can make an ordinary bottle unforgettable. That is the difference.
Diego Samper
Wine Explorer
P.S. This will be very limited. While searching for the best way to plan a trip for our members, I stumbled onto something else… barrels. It struck me that I could buy one for my newborn son and save the bottles for him to open years from now. The details aren’t ready yet, but if you want to be first in line, click here and I’ll let you know the moment it opens.