The two don’t mix, right? Wrong so says the all new Omnipair app, a sommelier in your pocket. Wine is one of the most natural packaged products that we buy, and history has changed our vinous product little in its 5,000 or so years of production.
The wine market has always struggled with embracing technology.
Over the years there have been debates about employing wine advisors in supermarkets leading to the creation of a computer which would recommend the wine for you and what dish it would go with. Needless to say we don’t see either in our supermarkets any longer. No, it is safe to say that the closest that tech has got to wine is using wine preservation systems. These offer consumers a taste, glass or carafe of their chosen wine keeping what’s not used drinkable for some considerable time. For recommendations the best we have are sommeliers and specialist wine shops. Two guys, Matt Gertner and Matt Day, are aiming to change this, at least in the restaurant scene (for now) with the new app Omnipair.
The idea is to allow the customer, as someone that likes wine, but maybe not the most knowledgeable about it, to be totally confident in their wine choice in a restaurant.
The customer brings up the Omnipair app, finds the restaurant that they are in and Omnipair will identify the wine list of the restaurant and the menu. Having instructed the app what dish you have chosen, it will give you a wine match from the database – by the glass (if available) or bottle and a percentage score representing the level of match to your food choice.
In the example that they walked me through, we were hypothetically at Angelus restaurant, I theoretically chose BBQ Scottish Scallops, tempura Lobster and it recommends Domaine des Vieux Pruniers Sancerre as a 95% match to the starter. At £44 per bottle it may be a little expensive, so apply a price filter and it changes the suggestion to Chateau de la Presle Touraine at £28 per bottle.
If I then chose a main course and select 400 gram Ribeye on the bone, the app cleverly then suggests that I go by the glass suggestion – Menetou Salon (78%) and Ch Civrac Cotes de Bourg (86%) at £9 & £7 respectively. The software constantly updates lists, vintages and menus using a web trawler.
Matt and Matt aim to have 1,000 restaurants on board to launch fully this autumn and aim to have the 3* and 4* restaurants sitting alongside 5* and Michelin sommelier hosted restaurants. According to the Matts, sommeliers see the app as welcomed assistance for the customer, who don’t perhaps want the intrusion of the personal wine advisor.
Omnipair is driven by an enormous database of around 10k wine types which wine expert Matt Day has poured over giving wines scores according to their likely flavour and style, matching them with foods. Algorithms then do the rest coming up with the matches.
The app wasn’t 100% well behaved during the demonstration, but pretty close. Considering the experiences that most of us have had with poor and downright unknowledgeable wine matching done by waiting staff then it has to represent a step forward. Most of us have a craving for a little wine knowledge.
The interesting point for the future is that these guys have pooled this incredible depth of knowledge and data, which doesn’t exist currently in any organised form. So over time the trends and insights that this knowledge will pull together from the on-trade about who is drinking what types of wines, where and with what foods surely is fascinating and has great value. Currently the process is a purely human, anecdotal industry driven by personal recommendation.
It is difficult to see that our restaurant and wine choices will ever be totally driven by pure computer choice. It is after all an area where we as consumers are led by feelings, emotions and impulse. However in response to our impulsive, emotion-led behaviour, in calculating what we tend to like, dislike and how we purchase restaurant experiences Omnipair surely has something to contribute.
So will it replace the sommelier? Of course not, we want some pomp and ceremony. But just maybe, wine and tech can get it together and help more consumers, to be more satisfied more of the time with their wine choice in a restaurant.
More info on Omnipair: a sommelier in your pocket is on their website. If you try it please let me know what you think.
Alistair Morrell
Hospitality & Catering News, Wine Content Executive