For sommeliers: the answer, ready before the question.

Every other page here argues your employer’s case. This one argues yours. A guest asks why the Chablis premier cru is $180 and you have it already: what it cost, when it landed, what the market says this month, and what it does against the course in front of them. Not a defence. A reason, in one sentence.

Get your free cellar report For wine directors and sommeliers

Photograph — Remo Vilkko / Unsplash

Six moments, none of them about software

A guest asks why the Chablis is $180: You have what it cost, when it landed, what it trades at now, and what the Kimmeridgian marl does against the shellfish course. One sentence, not a retreat into "it is a premier cru".
An owner asks why that bottle is still on the list: Because it is drinking now, it carries this GP, and it closes these four dishes. The argument exists in writing before the question arrives, which is the difference between a wine director and somebody who orders wine.
A new hire is on the floor Friday: They get the same structural argument, the same pronunciation, the same near-miss you would have named. The list stops being something only you can sell, which is what lets you take a Saturday.
A regular wants what they had in March: It is in the record: the vintage, the bin, the course it went with, whether there is another bottle. Recognition is a service and it should not run on your memory.
You are off on Tuesday: The floor is not worse on Tuesday. Coverage is answered and the pours are argued whether or not you are in the building.
You interview somewhere better: You leave with an exportable record of every pairing you argued and every correction you made. It is your work and it should travel with you.

The objection worth taking seriously

A sufficient pairing and an excellent one are different things, and the gap is everything you know that is not written down: the flow across courses, what the kitchen is actually doing with the sauce tonight, the table’s mood, the bottle you are holding for someone.

Aivin gets to sufficient in eight seconds. It does not get to excellent, and it is built to admit that — it names the pairing it avoided, and when you overrule it, it asks why and keeps your answer under your name.

If the machine can argue the pairing, what am I for?

Making the ask, if you have to

You will probably have to ask somebody for $295 a month. Do not walk in with a pitch about software. Walk in with the free report on your own cellar, ordered by consequence within a value basis, and lead with the two lines that survive: the capital sitting in lots nobody has touched, and the wine past its window still priced as though it were young.

Name the bounded cost, concede that the product is early, and ask for one month rather than a year. There is no contract to escape. If the first month’s brief does not name something worth doing, you have your answer and you have lost nothing.

Questions people ask first

How do I know if tonight’s pairing can be poured before service?

We 86’d a course halfway through second seating last Friday.

Load the menu at tonight’s cover count and Aivin does the bottle math per course, then names what the bins cannot cover and what to open instead. Six courses at three ounces is eighteen ounces a guest, so forty covers is three bottles a course and you need two behind it. That screen is Pairing Studio, $225 a month per property.