The first panel discussion in a jam-packed schedule at db’s AI conference touched on how artificial intelligence can be a sommelier’s best friend. Due to the enormous number of “extraneous circumstances” which affect our perception of taste (seating, lighting, music, choice of glassware etc), what we really need ahead of wine being poured or gastronomic dish served, is not a physical palate cleanser but a mental one, said Professor Charles Spence, head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford. Instead of a grapefruit sorbet, for instance, it’s more important to “get your mind in the right place” in order to maximise your enjoyment of the wine you’ve carefully chosen. “I can bring out the most amazing Château Latour from the ’60s,” said fellow panellist Chris Hoel, former sommelier at Napa restaurant French Laundry. “But if you’re fighting with your partner, it doesn’t matter what I give you to drink.” AI can not only provide on-trade venues with the optimum formula to re-set the equilibrium of guests’ senses, it can also work as a wingman for sommeliers in terms of recommending alternative wines which might just make a diner’s night. “I want AI to supercharge me, to give me a cape!” Hoel told an audience of more than 100 who gathered at the Science Gallery in King’s College London yesterday to listen to experts demystify the often opaque world of artificial intelligence. “It makes me look better and smarter and picks out things that I wouldn’t have thought
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Wine
