Rainy day letter: AI will never replace human perception of wine

The more consumers appreciate wine, the more real they want their experience to be

Lately we’ve been reading a lot about the ramifications of AI. For one, how it will soon take over thousands—or is it millions?—of jobs now performed by human beings.

In the wine industry there is speculation that in a few years there will be only a few human wine journalists left. Who needs people when AI can write, maybe even dispense reviews, about wine with infinitely more insight, and far, far faster and cheaper?

Far be it from me to disagree. Except when it comes to wine. When it comes to wine, the evidence for a prospective takeover of AI is not really there. That is, it is hard to believe that AI technology will soon be dictating how we receive wine-related information because that’s just not how wine is appreciated. AI doesn’t actually drink wine. We do. Wine consumption is a human, organic activity, not a theoretical one.

I, too, can make observations. Nothing, of course, like AI, but enough to draw logical conclusions. When it comes to wine, conclusions that are far more logical than what AI can surmise.

Take, for instance, the state of the wine industry itself. Fifty, sixty years ago technology began to sweep through the wine world like a hurricane. Innovations such as new styles of trellising, grapevine monitoring and proliferation of clonal selections were making it possible to grow grapes in places once thought impossible for grapes to even ripen. Maybe not so much in the Old World (where wine consumption has been leveling off since the 1990s); but for a while there, enthusiastic entrepreneurs and corporate interests in New World countries couldn’t plant new vineyards fast enough.

In wineries, the industry around the world could avail itself to temperature controlled stainless steel tanks, optical grape sorters, myriad yeast selections, enzymes and stabilizers, oak adjuncts negating the need for actual barrel aging, and on and on and on: An endless supply of tools making wine production easier, more precise, economical, far more predictable, and in a way, wine quality that much “better.”

Less than ten years ago a UC Davis professor even wrote an entire book based on the premise that terroir has become a myth. That the best wines are no longer grown or produced on the basis of where they’re grown. That science, like AI today, has taken over, and wines are better than ever because of it.

Somewhere along the line, though, the only part of the formula that really matters has put a kibosh on much of these modern day miracles: Consumers.

Consumers, or at last a growing number of consumers, are not just buying more wines that are the opposite of precise, economical or predictable⏤that is, wines possessing an increased sense of authenticity, particularly insofar as vineyards, regions, grapes or terroir, and good ol’ fashioned, human, handcrafted qualities—they are demanding more of these wines, not fewer.

To the point, as it were, directly reflecting the drastic changes in the market and industry we are seeing today: The downward, even if somewhat alarming, trend in demand for cheap, mass produced, industrialized wines going on at the same time as a steady increase of appreciation for handcraft, authentic wines, even at higher prices.

This, of course, is an all-too-human response to increased technology, akin to any opposite or equal reaction. The more technology of convenience you try to shove down people’s throats, the more they push back. Wine, of course, has always been considered a food. Appreciation of authenticity in wines is not much different from the never-ending yearning for authenticity in food—culinary arts as opposed to pre-packaged sameness.

Pre-packaged foods still sell like hotcakes, of course, but so do authentic foods artfully assembled by human hands. In recent decades, society’s ardor for any kind of organic cooking—from “Top Chef” showboats to “Pasta Grannies,” from Michelin star restaurants and increasingly gourmet pizza joints to food trucks located only by Instagram—has only increased exponentially, just like the interest in sommeliers, winemakers or anything having to do with “mastery” of wine. The more consumers appreciate wine, the more authentic they want their experience to be.

Ergo, wine writing performed by AI will never replace wine writing done by real people; mostly because wine appreciation will always be an utterly human affectation. As human beings, we want wines to be created by human beings. Therefore, if we want information on wines, we want that information to come from other human beings.

We will never be as “smart” as AI, but we will always better understand concepts such as nuance, originality, artistry, anything that is more a product of Nature and all her whims, as opposed to technology.

Wine, after all, is a sensory experience. AI can’t experience wine for us. It might be able to help us, and even find us some shortcuts. But ultimately, it cannot instinctively address the needs of a grapevine growing in the ground, and it cannot coax out scents and structural qualities from fermentations of grapes only a human palate can perceive.

This, like so many other things, will never change. In fact, the appreciation of ecce homo when it comes to wine will only increase as time goes by. To quote my longtime favorite passages at the end of Kermit Lynch’s Adventures on the Wine Route:

Once I took an afternoon off from wine tasting in Tuscany to visit a little museum in Florence where two recently discovered Greek statues were on display. The larger-than-life statues had a manlike shape and a heart-stopping, godlike presence. How had man created something so powerfully exquisite? Wine can produce the same reaction, but unlike music, literature, or visual arts, a great wine does not require a creative genius. A farmer working his piece of earth can produce something inspiring and profound...

Real wine is more than an alcoholic beverage. When you taste one from a noble terroir that is well made, that is intact and alive, you think here is a gift of nature, the fruit of the vine eked out of our earth, ripened by our sun, fashioned by man.