The Ghost in the Glass: 5 Ways AI Is Rewriting the Story of Wine

Natalie MacLean
Mar11th

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Introduction

If your wearable device knows your cortisol level, your heart rate, and the ambient light in your dining room, should it also choose the perfect wine for you? The Romans raved about Falernian. The Georgians were fermenting in clay vessels eight thousand years ago. Could AI finally let us taste what they were drinking? Conversely, can AI write an accurate tasting note for wine still in the bottle before a single human lifts the glass? When every appellation is covered, every vintage scored, and every back label written by an algorithm, what is a wine writer actually for?

You’re going to discover the stories and tips that answer those questions in this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m going solo rather than interviewing a guest, as I’d like to share these thoughts that have been on my mind.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

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Join the live-stream video of this conversation on Wednesday at 7 pm eastern on Instagram Live Video, Facebook Live Video or YouTube Live Video.

I’ll be jumping into the comments as we watch it together so that I can answer your questions in real-time.

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Highlights

  • What first drew Sarah toward Champagne, and why did the region capture her imagination so strongly early in her wine journey?
  • How does Champagne’s chalk soil influence vine behavior and the overall character of the wines produced there?
  • Why does the concept of terroir in Champagne depend as much on blending decisions as on vineyard origin?
  • How do reserve wines shape the consistency and identity of non-vintage Champagne?
  • What role does dosage play in balancing acidity and texture in finished Champagne?
  • Why do some producers choose to eliminate dosage entirely, and what stylistic risks does that decision create?
  • How does extended lees aging transform both aroma and texture in traditional method sparkling wines?
  • Why has grower Champagne gained so much attention over the past two decades?
  • How do small grower producers approach vineyard expression differently from the large Champagne houses?
  • What tasting clues help distinguish Champagne made primarily from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, or Meunier?
  • Why do many Champagne producers still rely on blending across villages rather than highlighting single vineyards?
  • How does the Champagne region continue adapting to climate change while preserving its traditional style?
  • Why does Champagne remain one of the few wine regions where blending is considered the highest expression of craftsmanship?

 

Resources

 

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Thirsty for more?

  • Sign up for my free online wine video class where I’ll walk you through The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!)
  • You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
  • The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.

 

Transcript

If your wearable device knows your cortisol level, your heart rate, and the ambient light in your dining room, should it also choose the perfect wine for you?

The Romans raved about Falernian. The Georgians were fermenting in clay vessels eight thousand years ago. Could AI finally let us taste what they were drinking?

Conversely, can AI write an accurate tasting note for wine still in the bottle before a single human lifts the glass?

When every appellation is covered, every vintage scored, and every back label written by an algorithm, what is a wine writer actually for?

You’re going to discover the stories and tips that answer those questions in this episode. I’m going solo rather than interviewing a guest as I’d like to share these thoughts that have been on my mind.

But first, in honour of the Oscars this Sunday evening, let’s look at wines and spirits that are produced or endorsed by movie celebrities starting with …

WINES

Sarah Jessica Parker — Invivo X SJP Parker collaborated with New Zealand winery Invivo to release her first wines in 2019, including a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc that sold out quickly in multiple markets. The partnership was notable because Sarah Jessica was involved in blending sessions and had genuine input into the final products, which gave the range more credibility than a straight licensing deal would have. Invivo has since expanded the collaboration to include additional varietals. The brand fits naturally with Parker’s public persona and the lifestyle associations that came with her years playing Carrie Bradshaw.

Snoop Dogg — 19 Crimes Treasury Wine Estates partnered with Snoop Dogg to create Snoop Cali Red and Snoop Cali Rosé under the 19 Crimes umbrella, which already had a strong brand identity built around stories of historical British convicts transported to Australia. The Snoop extension leaned into his California identity and used augmented reality label technology that brought him to life on the bottle. The collaboration was one of the more commercially successful celebrity wine launches of the early 2020s, and it demonstrated how a celebrity partnership could energize an existing brand rather than requiring a launch from scratch.

Following the massive success of Snoop’s partnership, Treasury Wine Estates doubled down on its “culture creator” strategy by recruiting Martha Stewart—Snoop’s longtime friend and frequent collaborator—to join the 19 Crimes lineup.

In early 2022, the brand launched Martha’s Chard, the first California Chardonnay in the 19 Crimes portfolio. This was a strategic shift for the brand; while Snoop brought “cool” and expanded the demographic to younger, more diverse audiences, Martha brought in the lifestyle and hosting space.

The Flavor Profile: Unlike the heavy, buttery Chardonnays often associated with California, Martha insisted on a “clean, crisp, and flavorful” profile that pairs well with food—reflecting her identity as a culinary perfectionist.

The Branding: Martha’s face replaced the traditional convict on the label. Keeping with the brand’s DNA, the cork even features her mugshot, a cheeky nod to her 2004 legal troubles that fits the “19 Crimes” rebellious theme perfectly.

Augmented Reality (AR): Just like the Snoop bottles, Martha’s label “comes to life” through a QR code or the Living Wine Labels app, where she shares hosting tips and phrases like, “Work hard. Play hard. Drink Chard.”

The collaboration was an immediate hit, becoming the #1 Wine Innovation of 2022. Its success proved that the “Snoop effect” wasn’t a fluke but a repeatable model for legacy wine brands to stay relevant.

Cameron Diaz — Avaline Cameron co-founded Avaline in 2020 with entrepreneur Katherine Power, positioning it as a clean, organic wine made without added sugars, colours, or concentrates. The brand tapped into a growing consumer anxiety about wine ingredient transparency and arrived with a wellness-adjacent identity that was rare in the category at the time. Avaline sources its wines from organic growers in Europe and has expanded its range steadily since launch. It resonated particularly with consumers who were already applying clean-label scrutiny to food but had not yet applied it to wine.

Post Malone — Maison No. 9 Rosé Post launched Maison No. 9 in 2020, a French Provençal-style rosé that succeeded in a crowded celebrity wine space by committing fully to accessibility and lifestyle rather than prestige positioning. The name references the tarot card that appears on his hand tattoo, which gave it a personal story to tell. Wine-specific trade media frequently held it up as evidence that celebrity wine can still land authentically when the artist’s identity connects organically to the product’s aesthetic rather than feeling like a licensing arrangement.

Drew Barrymore — Barrymore Wines Drew launched her wine label in partnership with Carmel Road Winery in California, offering a range of approachable varietals positioned at an accessible price point. The brand reflects her broader public persona: warm, unpretentious, and aimed at everyday enjoyment rather than occasion-driven consumption. It has not generated the same volume of trade press as some higher-profile celebrity wine launches, but it has maintained a steady retail presence and fits cleanly into the accessible-California-wine segment.

Blake Lively — Betty Buzz Blake launched Betty Buzz in 2021 as a line of premium non-alcoholic sparkling beverages designed to work as standalone drinks or as mixers. The range includes options like sparkling lemon and lime, ginger beer, and tonic water, and the branding is notably clean and design-forward. She later expanded into Betty Booze, a line of canned cocktails. Betty Buzz arrived at exactly the right moment in the sober-curious movement and filled a gap for a premium mixer brand that looked and felt upscale without being affiliated with a spirit.

Speaking of spirits …

George Clooney — Casamigos Tequila George co-founded Casamigos in 2013 with Rande Gerber and Mike Meldman, originally as a tequila they made for themselves and their friends in Mexico. The brand positioned ultra-premium tequila as a relaxed lifestyle choice rather than a party occasion, which was genuinely new at the time. Diageo purchased it in 2017 for up to $1 billion USD, one of the largest spirits acquisitions in recent history. It remains the reference point for every celebrity tequila that came after it.

Ryan Reynolds — Aviation American Gin Ryan acquired a stake in Aviation Gin around 2018 and turned it into a masterclass in celebrity brand building. His approach leaned entirely on classic Canadian self-deprecating humour and irreverent advertising that felt nothing like traditional spirits marketing. Diageo acquired a majority stake in 2020 in a deal reported at around $610 million, with Ryan retaining a minority interest. The brand is still widely cited in marketing circles as proof that personality and comedic consistency can outperform budget and heritage. I love anything Ryan endorses – loved his Mint mobile commercials too.

Matthew McConaughey — Longbranch Bourbon (Wild Turkey) Matthew came on as Creative Director for Wild Turkey in 2016 and co-created Longbranch, a Kentucky straight bourbon finished with Texas oak and mesquite charcoal filtering, released in 2018. The partnership has stood out for its longevity and Matthew’s actual involvement in the product development process. Trade commentary consistently frames Longbranch as one of the more credible celebrity spirits collaborations because it never relied entirely on his name to move bottles.

Dwayne Johnson — Teremana Tequila Dwayne launched Teremana in 2020 and grew it remarkably fast, with the brand crossing one million cases in its first year, a milestone most spirits labels take a decade to reach. The name blends the Polynesian word “tere,” meaning swift, with the Spanish “mana,” meaning spirit or soul. The brand leaned heavily on community messaging and Dwayne’s social media presence rather than traditional advertising. Trade coverage has repeatedly noted how Teremana framed high volume as a sign of inclusivity rather than a step down in quality.

Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul — Dos Hombres Mezcal The Breaking Bad co-stars launched Dos Hombres in 2019, a small-batch mezcal sourced from the Oaxacan highlands. What separated it from many celebrity spirits launches was a visible commitment to production transparency and terroir storytelling, both Bryan and Aaron travelled to Oaxaca and documented the process publicly. The brand positioned itself squarely in the craft mezcal space rather than trying to court a mainstream audience, which earned it genuine credibility among spirits enthusiasts who are usually the first to roll their eyes at celebrity labels.

Dan Aykroyd — Crystal Head Vodka Ottawa-born Dan and artist John Alexander launched Crystal Head in 2008, and it arrived in one of the most distinctive bottles in the category: a human skull made of Newfoundland glass. The vodka is quadruple distilled and filtered through Herkimer diamond crystals, and the brand leans into a mystical, skull-and-crystals aesthetic that is unusual enough to have sustained genuine collector interest. Despite being well over fifteen years old, it still sits in a lane entirely its own and continues to sell well in Canada, where it was originally produced.

Kendall Jenner — 818 Tequila Kendall launched 818 in 2021, named after the San Fernando Valley area code, and the brand expanded internationally with notable speed. Its marketing drew heavily on fashion, sustainability, and wellness aesthetics rather than the typical tequila party imagery. the brand has remained active in the premium tequila conversation and consistently appears in trade discussions about influencer-led expansion strategies.

Drake — Virginia Black Whiskey Drake partnered with spirits entrepreneur Brent Hocking to launch Virginia Black in 2016, a decadent American whiskey designed for a younger consumer who had not historically been drawn to the category. The branding and packaging were deliberately luxury-coded, leaning into Drake’s personal aesthetic rather than whiskey tradition. It was an early and influential example of a music and entertainment figure using their cultural identity to reframe what a whiskey brand could look like, and it helped open the door for a wave of hip-hop and R&B-affiliated spirits that followed.

Nick Offerman — Lagavulin Scotch Whisky Parks and Recreation actor Nick Offerman who played one of my fave characters of all time Ron Swanson partnered with Lagavulin Islay single malt since around 2014, and the collaboration has become one of the most affectionate and long-running celebrity-spirits pairings in recent memory. His character Ron’s love of Lagavulin on the show created a natural cultural entry point, and Nick has since appeared in multiple campaigns, holiday films, and limited-edition releases for the brand. It works because it never feels manufactured: Nick is genuinely a Lagavulin drinker, and the brand has leaned into that authenticity consistently rather than pivoting to chase younger audiences.

 

What’s new in the wine and spirits world this week?

This week marks a historic shift in the Canadian beverage landscape as Ontario and Nova Scotia officially opened their borders to one another. As of March 2nd, a landmark direct-to-consumer agreement allows residents in both provinces to order wine, beer, and spirits directly from producers’ websites, bypassing the traditional retail shelf.

Here’s a headline no one saw coming when Statistics Canada began tracking alcohol by origin back in 1992: imported wine sales in Canada fell year over year for the very first time, according to a major report released March 7th. That’s never happened before in over three decades of data. Within a single year, Canada’s share of American wine exports collapsed from 36% to just 12%. That swing erased a previous $254 million trade surplus and turned it into a $90 million deficit. Steve Gross, interim CEO of the Wine Institute, put it plainly: for many U.S. wineries, Canada was not just another market. It was the market that made international growth possible.

Canadian importers are eyeing the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down certain federal tariffs on wine as a chance to refresh their European portfolios – one industry roundup highlights how a small U.S. importer successfully challenged those tariffs, and Canadian buyers are watching to see if similar pressure emerges here.

Meanwhile, domestic wine grew its share, pushing Canadian-made product to 60.6% of total alcohol sales nationwide, per Statistics Canada. Ontario is driving that surge harder than anywhere else: VQA wines are up a remarkable 32.4% in the rolling 12 months to last November, led by Ontario red VQA up 66% and Ontario white VQA up 54%, according to LCBO figures.

If you are looking for a reason to toast this week, the calendar is packed. March 11th is National Oatmeal Nut Waffles Day, which sounds like a breakfast affair but is actually a savvy excuse for brunch: pair those nutty, toasted notes with an off-dry Riesling or an Amaretto sour.

March 13th is National Riesling Day, which deserves far more cultural fanfare than it typically gets. Celebrate with a German Spätlese, an Alsatian Riesling, or a Canadian VQA Riesling alongside something spicy. Better yet, host a blind tasting of dry, off-dry, and sparkling styles with fish tacos. Riesling’s natural sweetness and precise acidity make it one of the most food-friendly wines alive.

March 14th is Pi Day (3.14, get it?), National Potato Chip Day, and National Reuben Sandwich Day, which makes it one of the more agreeably chaotic food holidays on the calendar. A Riesling or a slightly chilled Pinot Noir with a Reuben is a deeply underrated pairing. For the potato chip contingent, try a high-acid sparkling wine with salt-and-vinegar chips: the bubbles and acidity cut through fat and salt in a way that is pure magic. Or host a savory pot-pie and Pinot Noir flight and call it a mathematics-themed dinner.

March 15th is National Peanut Lovers Day, which is hilariously good timing for satay skewers with an off-dry Riesling.

March 16th is National Artichoke Hearts Day, a genuine wine pairing challenge since artichoke makes almost everything taste slightly sweeter. The answer is a bone-dry Austrian Grüner Veltliner, which holds up beautifully, though a bright Sauvignon Blanc or fino-style Sherry will also do the job.

March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day and National Corned Beef and Cabbage Day, landing on a Tuesday this year, and the trend is moving away from neon-green beer and the all-day pub crawl toward something more considered. Try Guinness-braised short ribs at home, build a Stout-and-Cheddar pairing board, or put together a “new Irish” lineup: a classic pot-still whiskey, a cask-finished bottle such as Redbreast finished in Moscatel casks, and an Irish cream for dessert, then post your three-glass flight like a book-club tasting note. For cocktails, an Irish Negroni with Jameson in place of gin or an Irish Ginger with Teeling and ginger ale both reward the effort. Or simply pour a proper pint of Guinness and give it enough time for the surge to settle. If you want to zig when everyone else zags, a nervy Ontario Gamay with corned beef and cabbage is quietly excellent.

Trivia worth mentioning: Ireland did not lift its ban on pubs opening on St. Patrick’s Day until 1970. For most of the 20th century, the entire country was legally dry on its biggest celebration day. Today’s social-media-friendly shamrock cocktails are the great-grandchildren of the late 19th-century Irish-American barroom toasts that used parades and pub culture to assert identity.

Speaking of this, I’ll be on CityTV’s Breakfast Television drinkin’ the green and toasting my Irish ancestors March 17th.

Meanwhile, I joined Jess Allen, a host of CTV’s The Social, to do a blind potato chip tasting using “traditional” wine-tasting techniques. It was ridiculous in the best way. Can you volatize the esters of ketchup chips by swirling the bowl? Find out! I’ll include a link to the YouTube and Instagram videos in the show notes.

Please drop a comment when you do … Anything you want to say, just be kind as I was out of my depth here ;)

 

In Marketing Moves This Week

The marketing world is currently obsessed with “haptic storytelling”—using packaging to tell a story before the bottle is even opened. Specifically it uses the sense of touch to communicate a brand’s narrative, values, or “vibe” before a consumer even sees the product inside.

At London Packaging Week this was a major theme because it addresses a psychological concept called the Endowment Effect: the moment someone touches a product, they begin to feel a sense of ownership over it, making them significantly more likely to buy it. I know I’ve felt that vibe with every Apple product I’ve ever opened.

More recently, my favourite Canadian jewelry designer Julie Jira, sent me gorgeous earrings and a ring that I purchased recently. They arrived in this beautiful 3D sculpted box she printed herself. The ring reminds me of architect Frank Gehry’s wavy Guigenheim Museum and the Rioja winery he designed, Marqués de Riscal (you have to see the ring to understand what I mean so I’ll put that in the show notes).

Julie is an architect and a multidisciplinary designer in Toronto. She started the company when she was a young mother, drawing from her architectural background, to create wearable mini sculptures and functional objects driven by form, feeling, and material innovation.

I discovered her work accidentally at my favourite artisanal jewelry store in Toronto Made You Look on Queen Street West, but you can also order directly from her website atelierjjx.com, which I’ll include the show notes. Her pieces are remarkably affordable. This isn’t a paid ad and I’m not on commission, though I wish I were.

So now back to Haptic Storytelling and the Endowment Effect.

This design philosophy moves beyond simple “pretty” boxes and focuses on tactile feedback. It works by using specific materials and finishes to trigger neural responses:

Texture as Narrative: A luxury whisky might use a box with a “Study in Oak” (like the Macallan award-winner), featuring real wood grain or leather to tell a story of age and craftsmanship. A collaboration using studio leather and oak textures to emphasize the 33-year aging process.

Weight and Resistance: Heavy, rigid materials signal “premium” and “trustworthiness,” though personally I wish they’d stop making extra heavy bottles as they’re the wine and spirits’ industry’s most damaging impact on the environment. A box that offers a slight, smooth resistance when opened creates a sense of ceremony or “theatricality.”

Subconscious Cues: Soft-touch/Velvet: Signals gentleness, luxury, or skin-friendliness (common in beauty/skincare like Daisyface).

Raised Embossing/Grit: Suggests raw, natural ingredients or artisanal, small-batch production.

Magnetic Closures: The “click” provides a sensory “full stop” that reinforces the quality of the engineering. This reminds me of one of my favourite phrases in literature: The suitcase closed with a satisfying set of clicks by Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat in her acclaimed 1994 debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory.

In the book, the suitcase represents the weighted transition between Haiti and New York. That “satisfying set of clicks” isn’t just a sound; it’s a tactile “full stop” on one life and the beginning of another.

Designers often use Danticat’s description to explain how a closure (like a magnetic snap or a mechanical latch) can provide “emotional closure” for a consumer. When a high-end bottle or box clicks shut like that, it signals security, quality, and the end of a ritual.

Danticat is famous for this kind of “sensory memory”—using the way objects feel, smell, and sound to tell the story of the Haitian diaspora.

Recent Standouts from London Packaging Week

The Innovation Awards recently highlighted several brands that used these techniques to win:

Brand

Innovation

The “Story” Told via Touch

Hendrick’s Gin

The Whimsical Watering Can

Used a reusable, theatrical watering can shape to tell a story of “eccentric adventure” and sustainable reuse.

The Macallan

A Study in Oak

Ardbeg

The Abyss

Transformed whisky packaging into a deep, textured, “immersive” object that felt like an artifact from the deep.

The drinks industry or Apple or both should hire Julie if they want to take their packaging to the next level.

 

Something to make you smile

An auction in Geneva saw a bottle of “Space Wine”—Petrus that spent 14 months on the International Space Station—sell for a staggering sum. Tasters noted that the weightlessness seemed to have accelerated the aging process, giving the wine a “cosmic” softness that can’t be replicated on Earth.

A distillery in Scotland has started “ocean-aging” their gin by submerging crates in the North Sea. However, they hit a snag this week when they realized a local octopus had managed to unscrew one of the bottles. No word yet on whether the cephalopod preferred it with a twist of lime or a splash of tonic.

Speaking of bubbles, divers recently recovered a 100-year-old bottle of sparkling wine from a Baltic shipwreck, and while most expected it to be vinegar, the constant pressure and cold of the deep ocean actually preserved it so well that it was still “perfectly drinkable.”

Did you know that the “fizz” in your glass of sparkling wine is actually a sophisticated acoustic sensor? Researchers have found that the sound frequency of bubbles popping can tell you the quality and age of the wine. Smaller, high-frequency “pops” indicate a longer aging process and higher pressure, meaning your ears might be as good as your palate at spotting a top-tier Champagne.

Researchers have found that a single bottle of Champagne contains approximately 49 million bubbles, which is roughly ten times the number of stars you can see with the naked eye on a clear night.

he tiniest scratches and imperfections in a glass can act as “launch pads” for bubbles, because dissolved gas loves a rough surface to form stable nucleation points. That’s why the same sparkling wine can look wildly more fizzy in one glass than another, even if you poured from the same bottle. It’s not your imagination, it’s physics doing party tricks.

scientists studying beer foam have found that the stability of that frothy head depends heavily on specific proteins from malted barley and the way they interact with hop‑derived bitter compounds—tweak the protein structure or the hop chemistry and you can dramatically change how long the foam lasts, without altering the alcohol strength. In other words, there’s an entire quiet arms race in breweries over whose bubbles can cling to the glass the longest, even though most drinkers never realize they’re sipping on a tiny biochemical engineering project.

Researchers using thermal imaging and gas‑mapping tools have shown that the shape of a wine glass really does change what you smell, because different bowls and rims trap aromatic compounds in distinct “clouds” above the wine. In simple terms, your nose is interacting with a tiny, invisible weather system of esters and alcohol vapours, so swapping from a big‑bowled glass to a narrow flute can genuinely make the same wine smell more floral, more fruity or more muted – which makes that mismatched‑glass tasting night even more fun. So the next time someone rolls their eyes at your choice of glassware, you can tell them you’re not being fussy – you’re just optimising the micro‑climate.

The scientific name for the “fear of an empty glass” is Cenosillicaphobia, a term that originated as a joke but has since been adopted by cocktail enthusiasts globally to describe the urgency of the “last call.”

Scientists have confirmed that a legitimate medical condition called Oenophobia exists—a persistent, irrational fear of wine that can cause physical tremors just by being near a closed bottle.

the world’s most expensive “cocktail garnish” was unveiled this week: a diamond-encrusted olive. While it’s technically edible, the bar recommends that patrons “sip with caution” to avoid an emergency trip to the dentist.

In a bizarre record-breaking attempt, a collective of artists in France has claimed to have built the world’s largest “wine cork mosaic,” using over 300,000 recycled corks to recreate a portrait of a famous cellar master. The project took three years to complete and reportedly smells faintly of old Merlot.

A group of researchers recently discovered that fruit flies have a “drinking buddy” instinct. When male flies are rejected by females, they are significantly more likely to consume alcohol-laden fermented fruit than their “happily coupled” counterparts. It turns out that drowning one’s sorrows is a cross-species phenomenon.

A winery in Australia has introduced “Sheep-Mowers” equipped with tiny GPS backpacks. These high-tech grazers are programmed to clear weeds in specific rows, but the winery reports that the sheep have developed a “refined palate,” often trying to bypass the weeds to get to the succulent young grape leaves instead.

If you ever find yourself under a UV light at a party, your Gin and Tonic will actually glow a ghostly blue; this is because the quinine in tonic water is naturally fluorescent and reacts to ultraviolet rays.

recent research into aroma perception found that the key difference between how beer and wine smell comes down to the specific mix of a few dozen volatile compounds; when researchers swapped the aroma “recipes” between a beer‑like and a wine‑like liquid, trained tasters judged the base liquid less important than the scent cocktail itself, suggesting that with the right blend of fruity and malty notes you could, in theory, make a beer smell convincingly like wine or vice versa. It is a reminder that your brain is doing wild, behind‑the‑scenes chemistry every time you swirl a glass—so the next time something smells unexpectedly like strawberries or toast, you can thank a handful of invisible molecules for the punchline

Wine fermentation is not the work of a single organism. A typical fermentation tank is a full ecosystem: hundreds of bacterial and fungal species competing, collaborating and evolving all at once, operating on a timescale of days rather than millions of years. University of Adelaide researchers working with the Australian Wine Research Institute discovered that some of the microbial species present during fermentation of certain wines could not be matched to any existing scientific database. That means the organisms helping to create the flavour of those wines have not yet been formally identified by science. You are, in a meaningful sense, drinking the labour of creatures that have no names yet.

 

A winemaker in California discovered that a single 5-gram packet of wine yeast multiplies itself 100 to 200 times during fermentation. Most of that explosive growth happens in the first three to five days, which is what creates a vigorous fermentation. It’s like a microscopic population boom happening right inside your carboy.

Medieval monks genuinely believed their wooden stirring sticks were divinely inspired because they consistently produced successful fermentations. They had no idea they were simply collecting wild yeast and bacteria on the sticks when they hung them up between batches. Divine intervention turned out to be airborne fungi.

The word yeast comes from the Greek zein, meaning to boil, because that’s exactly what fermentation looked like to ancient observers who had no clue about microbiology. The foaming, bubbling must appeared to be boiling on its own, which must have seemed pretty magical before anyone knew microscopic organisms existed.

Every wine contains vinegar, which throws people for a loop. Wine yeast produces low levels of acetic acid (vinegar) during fermentation, usually between 0.02% and 0.06%. It’s barely detectable, but it contributes subtly to the wine’s overall character.

Yeast doesn’t just convert sugar to alcohol, it also evolved this ability as a form of chemical warfare. At about 5% alcohol by volume, the ethanol produced by yeast starts killing competing microbes in the fermentation environment. giving itself exclusive access to all those delicious grape sugars. By fermenting sugar into ethanol (which requires little oxygen), yeast creates an environment that kills competing bacteria and fungi, most of which die around 5% ABV. Some wine yeast strains can tolerate up to 20% alcohol, though most tap out between 12 and 15%.

researchers have shown you can engineer yeast to produce hop aroma compounds without producing much alcohol, which is one of the reasons non-alcoholic beer has started to smell and taste more convincingly “beer-like” instead of like sweet cereal water. It’s a quiet yeast revolution, and it’s happening at the level you can literally sniff

While we’re in a sciency mood, I want to share with you two articles I wrote earlier this year on the impact of AI on wine.

The Ghost in the Glass: Five Ways AI Is Rewriting the Story of Wine

I remember the hum of server rooms at the supercomputer company now the headquarters of Google. When I joined the wine industry twenty-five years ago, I thought I was leaving a binary world for a visceral one. I wanted harvest heat, fudgy soil, the cool zip of Riesling on my tongue. Silicon has caught up to the soil.

Wine writing has always been a strange translation. You taste a changing liquid then try to trap it in words. Critics have spent centuries arguing about whether that translation is possible. AI has shifted the argument. No longer about whether words can capture wine. Now about whether writers need to be human at all.

The conversation has been predictable: AI will churn out soulless tasting notes, democratize wine knowledge, or never replace the gifted palate. These are the wrong worries. Here are five deeper ones.

1. The Molecular Ghostwriter

Gas chromatography and mass spectrometry can identify hundreds of volatile aroma compounds in a glass of wine. Researchers at UC Davis and the Australian Wine Research Institute have mapped these compounds for decades. AI can cross-reference those chemical fingerprints against vast libraries of tasting notes and produce descriptors that are not guesses but predictions grounded in molecular data.

A tasting note could soon be written before any human tastes the wine. The winery submits a chemical analysis. An AI returns a note. It will be accurate in ways human notes often are not, because humans are fatigued, flawed, and suggestible. What it will not contain is the moment of surprise, the slight bewilderment that makes a great tasting note feel like a discovery rather than a report. That gap, between accurate and alive, will define wine writing for the next generation.

2. The End of the Universal Palate

Robert Parker built an empire on the idea that one palate, rigorously applied, could guide millions of buyers. Wine Spectator extended the model with panels of trained tasters whose scores became a currency. That model depended on scarcity: most people lacked access to expert guidance, so they deferred to whoever had it.

AI collapses that scarcity. Systems trained on purchase histories, flavour preference data, and regional taste patterns can generate personalized recommendations with uncanny precision. But the more radical extension is not recommendations. It is prose. Notes calibrated not only to your budget and dinner plans, but to your actual biology.

Roughly a quarter of people are supertasters, including yours truly, carrying a genetic variation that makes bitterness hit harder and tannins feel more aggressive. The same Nebbiolo can be a punishment or a revelation depending on the physiology of whoever holds the glass. Adaptive review systems in early development can recalibrate a tasting note in real time: structure shifts, descriptors adjust, the finish described with or without the astringency the reader’s receptors register.

The column, the panel score, the 100-point scale: these are broadcast formats. AI is a direct message. When wine writing becomes a one-to-one conversation shaped by your DNA, the universal critic does not just become less relevant. He becomes a category error.

3. The Living Document

A bottle of Barolo bought today will taste nothing like it does in fifteen years. Wine writers have always known this, and the best have written beautifully about it. The tasting note, however, has remained frozen, a snapshot taken on a particular afternoon, in a specific mood, under particular cellar conditions.

AI combined with IoT sensors in wine storage systems will change this. Imagine a tasting note that updates as the wine ages: temperature logged, humidity tracked, drinking windows revised in real time. The note becomes a living document, a relationship rather than a verdict. It is already being trialled by cellar management platforms. The authoritative note may give way to a conversation spanning decades.

4. Wines No Living Person Has Ever Tasted

AI trained on ancient texts, archaeological residue analyses, and the genetic sequencing of extinct grape varieties could produce historically grounded tasting notes for wines no living person has ever drunk. Researchers have sequenced the genome of ancient grape varieties from waterlogged seeds and ceramic residues. The Romans had strong opinions about Falernian wine. The ancient Georgians were fermenting in qvevri eight thousand years ago. AI can model what those wines likely tasted like based on grape genetics, climate reconstructions, and the flavour chemistry of analogous modern varieties.

This opens an entirely new genre: archaeological wine writing. Speculative, yes, but disciplined speculation rooted in real data. Writers who engage with it will collaborate with chemists, historians, and geneticists. The question what does this taste like will extend across centuries.

5. The Attribution Crisis No One Is Ready For

Wineries are already using AI to generate back-label copy, tech sheets, and press releases. Some use it for tasting notes published under human names. The wine media, under crushing commercial pressure, lacks the infrastructure to detect this or, in many cases, the incentive to try.

The result is a slow contamination of the written record. When a note generated by an algorithm appears under a critic’s byline, or a winery’s AI-written description gets reprinted in a respected publication, the epistemological foundation of wine writing, the idea that a real person tasted this wine and told you what they found, begins to dissolve. Unlike debates about AI in journalism or fiction, this one is happening quietly, beneath the prestige layer of the industry, in mid-market communications that move the most wine. By the time a scandal forces reckoning, habits will be entrenched.

These five futures are not equally weighted. Some are thrilling, some melancholy, one should keep wine writers up at night. None concern whether AI can describe blackcurrant or pencil shavings convincingly. That question is too small. The larger one is about the purpose of wine writing, who it serves, and whether those who devoted their lives to it will shape these changes or simply be overtaken by them.

I am betting on the writers, but I am watching the algorithms.

 

Sediment and Silicon: Five Futures Wine Writers Don’t See Coming

I recently argued that the wine writing conversation has been too focused on whether AI can describe blackcurrant convincingly. That piece covered five larger shifts happening now. The following five are more quietly threatening, structurally unsettling, and in at least one respect, genuinely exciting.

1. The Digital Twin Critic

Wine writing has always had ancestors: André Simon, Pamela Vandyke Price, Alexis Lichine. Their language, standards, and quirks live on in the prose of those who followed. AI can now make that inheritance literal.

By training on the complete published output of a previous critic, an AI system can reconstruct that writer’s stylistic fingerprints with unnerving precision: the vocabulary they favoured, the regions they trusted, the structural bones of how they built an argument. The result is not imitation but a cross-temporal dialogue. A 2025 Napa Cabernet reviewed through the sensibility of a 1930s London palate. A Burgundy assessed by a system modelled on the critical language of the postwar generation.

This is not nostalgia. It is a forensic tool for understanding how taste itself has changed, how ripe fruit displaced elegance, how scores replaced narrative. The digital twin critic holds a mirror to the present by speaking from the past.

2. Deepfake Terroir

This is the dangerous one. The same AI that can reconstruct a historical critic can also write a story about a wine that is entirely fictional.

Industrial-scale producers are already using generative AI to write winery histories and harvest legends. The grandmother who tended the vines for forty years. The family plot on the south-facing slope in the same hands for five generations. The hand-harvested fruit, the artisanal approach, the deep respect for the land. It reads like a novel because, increasingly, it is fiction.

None of it may be true, but all of it will be meticulously written.

The wine writer’s role is about to expand in a direction nobody anticipated: forensic investigator. The skills that once went into sensory description will increasingly go into verification. Does this estate actually exist? Does this vintage year match the claimed production method? Is this story consistent with what satellite imagery shows about the vineyard’s size and mechanization?

Writers who can detect algorithmically generated fiction will become the most valuable critics in the industry. The mud on their boots will be the credential no AI can replicate.

3. Biometric Wine Pairing

Many wine pairing guides will tell you what to drink with duck confit or aged cheddar. None will tell you what to drink after you have lost a client, had a fight with someone you love, or sat in traffic for ninety minutes in the rain.

AI is beginning to close that gap. Systems that read biometric data, heart rate variability, cortisol proxies drawn from wearable devices, even the ambient light and noise level of a room, can now infer emotional state with surprising accuracy. The next step, already being prototyped by companies working at the intersection of wellness technology and hospitality, is pairing that emotional data with both a wine and the story written around it.

Whether that feels like a service or a surveillance will depend entirely on who controls the data.

4. The Vintage That Has Not Been Poured Yet

Wine writers have always worked in retrospect. The bottle is opened, the wine tasted, the note written. The entire craft is built on the premise that something must exist before it can be described. AI is dissolving that premise.

Soil moisture sensors, satellite thermal imaging, fermentation chemistry tracked in real time, and climate models calibrated to the specific conditions of a harvest: together, these data streams now allow predictive systems to sketch the likely profile of a wine still aging in barrel. The 2026 vintage can be written about in 2025. Drinking windows can be projected before a cork has been cut.

For wine writers, this is a genuinely new kind of storytelling. The biography of an unfinished thing. Not a review but a forecast, and one with enough scientific grounding to be taken seriously. The writer becomes part journalist, part climate scientist, part prophet.

5. The Abundance Paradox

The most counterintuitive consequence of AI in wine writing will be the revival of voice. The internet will soon be saturated with technically competent AI wine content. Every appellation covered. Every vintage assessed and scored. Most of it accurate, generated by systems that have read more wine writing than any human ever will.

And most of it completely forgettable.

When information becomes infinite, readers stop searching for information. They start looking for perspective. Who do they find? Writers who are funny, sharp, or unexpectedly moved by a modest table wine from an underreported region. Critics candid about wines that do not live up to their reputation or their price. Storytellers who weave narrative with enough honesty that even failure becomes interesting because it is human.

The flood of algorithmically perfect prose will, paradoxically, make imperfection the most valuable thing a wine writer can offer.

AI has no scars. It has never stood in a vineyard after a frost that took the harvest or felt the relief of a warm September after a summer of rain. Those experiences leave marks that show up in prose. Readers respond to them even when they cannot name what they are responding to.

The algorithm will describe exactly what is in the glass. The writer will share the messy human struggle to get it there.

If you’re reading the paperback or ebook or listening to the audiobook of my memoir Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much, a national bestseller and one of Amazon’s best books of the year, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected].

Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps a wine made the old-fashioned way without AI.

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