The House Somm. A sommelier's palate on every table, in two languages, at every hour.
Every night, guests arrive with questions your team cannot always answer in the moment. What goes with the duck. Whether the Burgundy is worth the jump. What to drink when they are not drinking at all. Some of those questions land when the room is slammed. Most of them land after your sommelier has gone home, on your website, at midnight, from a guest deciding whether to book at all.
Most rooms answer those questions with a menu PDF and a phone number.
The House Somm is a sommelier's judgment, running on your website and in your room, trained on your list, your menu, and your rules.
It pairs with real reasoning, not keyword matching. It answers in English and in Chinese, natively. It knows what to say to the guest who is not drinking, and it says it with the same care as everything else. And it recommends the way a good sommelier does, from knowledge, without ever pushing.
It is one line of code on your site. It is live in fourteen days.
There are plenty of restaurant chatbots. They were built by software companies who have never worked a Saturday service, and it shows the moment a guest asks something a menu cannot answer.
The House Somm was built by a working sommelier and general manager at a Michelin Key property, with dual WSET and ISG diplomas, who has spent twenty years reading tables and building wine programs. The pairing logic is his. The service instincts are his. The sentence the guest reads at the table is one he would have said himself.
That is the entire difference, and it is not something a feature list can copy.
| Tier | Setup | Monthly | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentialthe first service layer | $2,500 | $500 / mo | Menu + policies + basic pairing, one language |
| Signaturethe full palate | $4,000 | $850 / mo | Full wine list palate + EN/中文 + zero proof program + monthly guest report |
| Cellar Flagshipthe sommelier build | $6,000 | $1,200 / mo | Deep cellar reasoning + by-the-glass logic + monthly staff training sheet + priority operator access |
One upsold pairing a night typically covers the retainer. The higher check is the result of a guest feeling read, not the goal.
An AI sommelier is software that recommends wine and beverage pairings using a real sommelier's reasoning: the acid, weight, and texture of the dish, the occasion, and the guest's budget. Unlike a generic chatbot, it is built on a wine professional's pairing logic and trained on one restaurant's actual list.
It depends entirely on who built it. A general purpose chatbot retrieves wine facts. The House Somm was built by a working sommelier with dual WSET and ISG diplomas and is trained only on your list, so it recommends the way a trained palate would, from bottles you actually pour.
A restaurant chatbot answers logistics: hours, parking, bookings. The House Somm answers the questions that need judgment, above all what to drink and why, including for guests who are not drinking alcohol. It was built by an operator, not a software company.
Yes. The House Somm answers in native Simplified Chinese, not machine translation, reviewed by a native speaker. For rooms with Chinese speaking guests or tourists, this is usually the single highest return feature.
No, and it is not designed to. It carries your sommelier's judgment to the tables and hours they cannot reach: the website at midnight, the slammed Saturday, the guest too shy to ask. The floor is still the job. This is leverage, not replacement.
Fourteen days from intake to live, and installation on your site is a single line of code.
Setup starts at 2,500 dollars with monthly plans from 500 dollars, depending on tier. One upsold pairing a night typically covers the retainer.
The House Somm is built one room at a time, because the palate has to be calibrated to your list. Allocation closes when it closes.
TS-HS-01 · The House Somm · An AI sommelier by Woody Wu