Would you pick a wine recommended by AI?

Writing about wine in simple terms is difficult, says author Andrew Jefford, but reviews written by Al aren't likely to take over as wine tasting remains a sensory subject

- Ruma Singh

Is writing about fine wine irrelevant in today's world? Wine is already a subject that many consider rife with snobbery, full of incomprehensible terminology, familiar only to a hallowed few.

Moreover, we live in a time of short attention spans, with five-second reels and short reads dominating our lives. While we are focusing on creating bite-sized content, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking over writing in a lot of spheres-it is now putting together essays, sketching travel itineraries, making to-do lists.

Besides all this, AI is also churning out wine advice and writing critical scores, that too in the blink of an eye.

So, is there a need for wine commentary by human beings any more? Will wine writers become redundant faster than you can say "Napa"? A few months ago, around the very time a new phenomenon called ChatGPT burst upon the scene, I picked up a book called Drinking With The Valkyries by Andrew Jefford (published by the Académie du Vin Library in 2022). It is a 245-page curated collection of essays by Jefford, spanning his lengthy career as a critic. The book, not his first, has gone on to be nominated for numerous awards and received multiple accolades from critics and the wine industry alike.