I am sure, if asked nicely, ChatGPT could write a serviceable “Silver Spoon” column. If asked to mimic me specifically, I suspect it would aspire to reach similar heights of dazzle and charm, but would naturally fail to get all of the way there. I am not willing to try it, of course – just as I am unwilling to author and issue my own P45. Call me a Luddite, philistine or some other euphemism for “bore” – but such caution seems entirely rational to me.
I do wonder, however, if I have stumbled across a genuine restaurant-y use case for AI. It can’t sauté, dice, sear, grill, fillet or flambé yet – incorporeality tends to be a barrier to entry when it comes to chef work. But can it read a wine list? Can it interpret my tastes and work within my budget (low! Thanks for asking) and recommend me a great bottle? This, you see, is an academic ask as much as it is a sensory one: access the total sum of human knowledge about vineyards, chateaux, vintages, regions and grape variety and come back with an answer more interesting than “Just order the second cheapest on the menu”.
Of course, I take no pleasure in the potential demise of the sommelier – a cerebral and dignified profession, it is. But it seems very likely to me that – in just a few years’ time – the whole pursuit will appear to us as a strange medieval decadence. What do you mean it was once possible to make a living by knowing an awful lot about old-style Barolo? As if you could afford to rent a Zone 3 flat in London by casually being able to distinguish between your Napa and Oregon Pinot Noirs. One day the somm might be as mystical a figure as the knight or the gladiator, the court jester or the “magazine journalist”.
I wrote to ChatGPT to find out. “I like to drink a light Burgundy or a Beaujolais. What should I order from the wine list at the Bloomsbury restaurant Noble Rot? My budget is [REDACTED].” It writes back to ask whether I had considered ordering a light Burgundy or a Beaujolais. Thanks, Einstein! An uninterested human – or perhaps a horse in a bow tie and tails – could offer similarly jejune advice. “If you enjoyed reading Joyce, can I introduce you to the concept of reading more Joyce?”
It is not a bad mode of thinking, I suppose, but it really is rather vague, and philosophically frustrating. Perhaps I am just asking the wrong question. I offer it a link to the wine list, and ask it to, somewhat pejoratively, “do better”. And well, get a load of this thing – such a fast learner. It comes back with detailed tasting notes, and a specific suggestion that I drink Jean Foillard, Morgon “Cuvée Classique” 2023. That is better.
There is a caveat at the bottom of the page that reads “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info”. I find this over-zealous and too humble by half. Because I didn’t find my new AI somm was prone to making mistakes – in fact it returned good answers to every question with mechanical certainty. But I found something much worse altogether – a sommelier with no personality, no point of view, no idiosyncratic tastes and no sense of humour. I found a machine, because well, obviously.
Yes, the AI somm can quite convincingly guide me through a wine list. But what about the waiter in 2021 who recommended me a vegetal, distinctly odd and genuinely arresting Cab Franc, simply because he remembered drinking it on holiday ten years prior? Or how about the server who introduced me to the oxidised whites of Jura because he overheard me make a robust defence of sherry. I prefer imperfect advice from a character than any of this accurate, route-one, serviceable AI gameplay. There I go with the Luddism again.
We have seen the contours of the argument before. Would you not rather own a painting painted by something with a soul? A canvas stretched by a human’s hands? It means something – it has to – to know that a person wrote a song not a computer. Exactly what? I don’t know. I’ll leave that to the theologians among us. But I can tell you this – I am feeling bullish about the corporeal realm, thank God.
[Further reading: The very British brutality of Kind Hearts and Coronets]
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This article appears in the 11 Mar 2026 issue of the New Statesman, The Great British Crisis
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