If you’ve been in the wine trade long enough, you’ll probably have heard it described as a “people” business. Mixing with crowds of professionals, surrounded by lineups of large stemmed glasses, it’s likely that someone has said to you: “What I love about wine is the human stories,” “It’s less about the liquid and more about the connections,” “There would be no trade without the people behind it.”
Why, then, it bears asking, has the industry become so interested in AI-assisted sales, where a human is not involved? And does the influx of artificial intelligence within the trade pose any threat to an industry that’s built its reputation on personability?
In the off-trade, at least, the proliferation of AI tools seems to be being met largely with warmth. In June this year, widely respected retailer The Wine Society jumped on board via a partnership with sensorial AI platform Preferabli, launching a tool named My Taste Match.
Asking users a series of fast and targeted questions, the system builds a taste profile based on the members’ answers, with an ability to filter through more than 2,000 wines on the website. At the time of release, The Wine Society noted that the tool was built in collaboration with Masters of Wine and Master Sommeliers.
In this way, it’s “AI with a human touch,” said Pam Dillon, CEO and co-founder of Preferabli, keen to emphasise that the tool is steeped in knowledge from real professionals.
Not the only ones to embrace AI, Marks and Spencer became relatively early adopters in 2025 when they similarly launched an AI tool, also with Preferabli. Named Wine Finder, a series of questions leads consumers to a recommendation across 400 wines.
A way to demystify wine, which is a famously confusing product for many: “We know wine can be a difficult category to shop and it’s important that we find new ways to support our customers,” Caroline Thompson-Hill, head of BWS, said at the time.
Speaking to Drinks Retailing, Virgin Wines revealed themselves as the latest retailer to integrate AI into their online sales. Comparing it to algorithms used on Netflix or Spotify, Danny Cooper, chief information and digital officer at Virgin Wines, said that their programme uses machine learning to assess customers’ flavour preferences based on their purchasing and ratings.
When asked about human input, “Every bottle of wine is tasted by a Master of Wine, and a detailed profile of that wine is added to the machine-learning system,” he said. “This allows human expertise to be combined with the data collected from customers.”
Not a traditional AI bot for customers to speak with, “customers do not need to interact directly with technology,” he explained. Rather, they just receive a set of highly relevant recommendations. This, he said, naturally improves customer confidence, noting that they’ve noticed more experimental purchasing since merging AI into the website.
Bridging the gap, then, between the in-person guidance that might be offered in a brick-and-mortar store and online, at its best, AI can empower the consumer to be braver in their purchasing. Speaking to Ian Carroll, who created the AI sommelier service Pinpointed, he said that he made the programme to act as if it were a person on the shop floor.
“When e-commerce came along, for some reason, we started making customers do all the work. We gave them websites that listed hundreds or even thousands of wines and a set of filters and expected them to know which grape, region, appellation, body or style to choose,” he said, adding that this was too intimidating of an ask.
Now, according to him, AI can offer the guidance people have long been craving. Not yet perfect, “I think it is important not to pretend the technology is infallible,” he said, adding that the quality of the recommendation is based heavily on the retailer’s product data.
Nonetheless, he heralded AI as an exciting thing for the future of online wine selling, especially, as the others also said, because of its ability to remove the shame from wine buying. “Someone who doesn’t know much about wine may be reluctant to ask what they think is a stupid question in a shop. They don’t have that embarrassment talking to AI.”
Mirrored by fellow creator Matt Ovenden, founder of AI sommelier The Wine Engine: “You don’t need to know what appellation you’re looking for. You can simply say: ‘I love big, smooth red wines, I’m cooking steak tonight and I want to spend about £20.’ That’s democratisation to me,” Ovenden said.
On the gatekeeping within the industry: “There can still be a perception around wine that you’re supposed to know the language before you’re entitled to join the conversation,” Ovenden continued, pointing to common fears around pronouncing a region incorrectly or choosing the wrong product somehow. For him, it’s liberating that an AI sommelier doesn’t care.
All in all, then, an interesting, if currently imperfect, venture, it seems like a whole mass of retailers are finding success with AI, and that it’s playing an interesting role in widening consumer tastes. No replacement for a good salesperson, everyone seemed to agree, but perhaps a useful tool for when one can’t be present.
