SOMMGPT

An Essay on wine by Jove Tripp-Thompson

AI is useless.

It doesn’t do research, because it can’t, and we couldn’t trust it if it could. AI has become the de facto answer to questions, even though it is a void that will regurgitate the answer you want the longer you stare into it. The only thing we can trust it to do is to help the uninitiated-guest to know what wine they should have with dinner--and even then, Sommeliers will posit, AI cannot be trusted to do that. Because the interactions between food and wine are some complex, masters-of-wine must prowl the floors, like a hunter, and the prey is the ignorant.

We can’t trust Sommeliers, either.

Sommeliers, these symbols of knowledge and prestige, do not approach tables to offer experience: they are here to pad their pockets by assuring a bigger sale, to assure bigger tip. They spend hours of preparation sharpening their mind, the most powerful weapon, for the perfect moment to strike.

They may think they offer experience, they may think they are padding pockets, but whose pocket are they really padding?

A Sommelier is deployed as an answer to a percieved problem: people are not spending enough money. Servers are intent on studying the guest, have they reached for the wine list? Are they a group of four that wants the same glass of wine, because perhaps the sommelier can sell them a bottle instead. The server thinks, too, that they are padding their pocket.

But whose pocket are they really padding?

Atmosphere, cuisine, provide the illusion of permission to experience excess. From the moment you walk in and have your coat checked, to the arrival of your appetizers, to the exit where you are encouraged, obliged--No--obligated to give a sly handshake, a $5, a $10, a $20, a $100. A tip that you hope would be shared between the hosts, but will likely go missing.

“If you can’t afford it, don’t eat here,” Servers will say when they are given a 15% tip, “this table was a nightmare, I deserve more”. It’s true, they do deserve more, because the work that food and beverage workers do is a nightmare from hell, and anyone that tells you they love it is crying themselves to sleep at night, or getting drunk, or doing drugs about it. It is understandable, food and beverage workers are skilled illusionists, after all, pulling the wool over your eyes that this is okay, this is normal.

Never, ever trust a Sommelier, even the most well intentioned, because they work under a specific duress to achieve a single goal: at the expense of your wallet and experience, I am here to prove my worth. I am here to prove to my servers I belong in the tip pool, prove to management that I was the right hire, to make my owners more money.

A worthwhile Sommelier is not one who is knowledged, but one who knows how to pressure, to use the situation against you, to force your hand. Sommeliers are sales people, first, foremost, always.

So, why, then, should a Sommelier spend hours and hours peering over, sleeping on top of tomes of wine knowledge. Why should they peer over volumes of Burgundy and Bordeaux at an exceptional length of 1000 pages? For what? To prepare them for a four-sentence interaction?

Sommeliers can’t be trusted because, much like the guest they scoff at as they peer over their table like a shark smelling blood, they’re using ChatGPT too. Volumes have been replaced by the phone.

A Sommelier does not, can not, know everything, and they never will. Wine knowledge will be appreciated only by other Sommeliers, drunk at the bar after a wine convention, where they can flex a muscle that is normally flexed in the solitude of their home, before the mirror. They cannot spend several hours before work studying anymore, they are too hung over, they will ask ChatGPT before leaving the wine cellar, and they will tell you everything you want to know, like the void.

Dead internet theory posits that no interactions online are made by real people; everything has been manufactured by bots, everything is spam, everything is illusion. We cannot trust anything anymore, because everything is being filtered through AI, then filtered through a Sommelier, then filtered through your own preconceived notions about wine.

ChatGPT is as sufficient as any sommelier, because Sommeliers have no incentive to learn, because learning cannot solve the impossible ask: Make everyone happy, make everyone money.

Sommeliers are useless.

Here’s my advice, next time you want to split a bottle of wine: quit while you’re ahead and get a beer instead.

Jove