TELL US WHAT TO DO

Indeed, wine may have an approachability problem, as brought to our attention last week by colleague Jess Lander writing in the San Francisco Chronicle. (https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/wine/article/ai-sommeliers-bay-area-22081880.php) In the piece Jess focuses on how AI is scaring the bejeezes out of sommeliers (and the rest of us), who are witnessing their guests calling up chatbots to select wines for them.

Lander cites a somm – clearly in defensive mode – who tells her, “I have had guests say, ‘I don’t like the wine AI gave me,’ That’s why I’m here, that’s why I ask you questions about what you drink every day, about what you’re eating tonight. I’m not sure AI understands the guest and what they need.”

Of course, the machine doesn’t understand what the diner needs; it’s only spouting in rote formation what has been written about wine lo these many years.

Of course, and obviously, we wine journalists and somms haven’t connected with vox populi. We – even me, who set out years ago to “demystify” wine like so many others – have failed.

I’m using wine here to make a point, but obviously it’s a metaphor to describe more broadly, how we’ve failed to instill confidence in people to have critical thoughts and/or original thinking. And therefore, we are slowly and in so many ways, dousing those pathways from firing and our experiences, and rendering us moot.

That’s how AI will get us. Not just by eliminating our jobs – which psychologically is the backbone of human identity – but by ringing the humanness out of us. By allowing machines to tell us what to do.

I’m oftentimes reminded in this context of that scene from Monty Phython’s “Life of Brian”, in which the beckoning crowd -- to the mother of the supposed messiah, who tells them to go away from her window – pleads in unison, “Tell us what to do.”

It used to be religion which told us what to do. Now, bots are anointing us with things to believe in, what to believe, and how to behave. All, to my value system, are debilitating, soul-sucking, and making us dumber.

I get it. Wine, wine comprehension, and making much more critical decisions on our own, not easy. There are things we must learn from those disciplines in order to function in society. I’m afraid those intuitive, instinctual, and human roadmaps are being pummeled into submission; and we’re becoming lazy.

So, in this moment, I’m drawn to several occasions in my life that revolve around wine. But as I really think about those – as human beings have/had done through Millenia – it’s much more than wine — they are the catalysts for life-affirming minutes.

My first experience with wine was at Sunday Suppers at my aunt Esther and uncle Tommy’s house in Brooklyn. Esther became a world-class Italian cook. Tommy always had those straw fiascos of Chianti on the table. Which is where I was offered my first small sips; and in which, as maybe a 12-year-old, I somehow knew there were so many things in life I need to discover.

The next scenario came when I first started dating. While other guys would take their dates to the movies, I thought, “I don’t want to do that, in a movie you can’t talk.” So, I took my girlfriend to a restaurant. One time, on the far-westside of lower Manhattan – in an attempt (in vain it turned out) to impress – I ordered a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Somehow, I knew how to pronounce it. I had no idea what it was.

The other tableau came when I took a group of vintners, by train, down to Hanford, Ca. in the early ‘90s where in the middle of nowhere, equidistant between San Francisco and L.A., chef Richard Wing held court in one of the greatest restaurants I’d ever been in. The Imperial Dynasty.

When Richard realized I was bringing Robin Lail, the daughter of John Daniel of the great Inglenook Winery from1939-64; Zelma Long, one of the first modern great California winemakers; and Steve Mirassou, a scion of the oldest wine family in America -- Richard did this:

He had waiting for us on the table, circa-1950 vintages of wines from Inglenook, Simi, and Mirassou, representing his guests’ ancestral wines.

I in turn, added to what became I think to all for us that night – a life experience in wine and food – that I hope all remembered and cherished.

During the course of the startingly three-hour meal in which Mr. Wing made us dishes such as escargot in pasta shells slathered with cashew butter sauce. It was a French dish in the Chinese manner — making the Dynasty the first chinoise restaurant in America.

I then asked Robin, Zelma and Steve to try and recount moments from the ‘50s when they all would have been kids. All I remember is Lail telling us how she used to play in and climb all over the huge casks in Inglenook’s cellar. Long, naturally, hadn’t yet arrived at Simi in those days; and Mirassou told us something about his uncles and the rest of his family.

It was an extraordinary night. But the point I’m trying to convey, is that in all those moments, it was wine that was the nexus that brought family and friends together.

I cannot imagine – and in fact this notion horrifies me – someone types into a chatbot and “asks” without passion, What wine should I have? The memories, laughter, tastes, and experience cannot and will not be remotely the same. “Remotely” being the operative word.