Wine should be a pleasure, not a quiz.
Most tables don't have a sommelier, and the list reads like a test you didn't study for. So we built sommelai: the kind of help that used to be reserved for the few, pointed at whatever you're looking at tonight.
The list is a test you didn't study for.
Two hundred names, a few you half-recognize, a waiter waiting. So you order the second-cheapest red and never find out what you missed.
Wine has spent centuries behind a wall, made to feel like something you need permission to enjoy. For most people, at most tables, no one ever hands over the key.
We're not here to replace the sommelier.
A great sommelier is one of the best things about a great restaurant: reading the table, telling the story, pouring the bottle you'd never have found alone. We wouldn't want to take that.
But most restaurants don't have one, and most tables never will. We built sommelai for those tables, and for the moment you'd love a little help and there's no one to ask. Where there is a great somm, you walk up with a place to start instead of nothing.
You don't have to perform to drink well.
The point was never to make you sound like an expert. What sommelai does is quieter: it learns the bottles you've loved and points you toward something you'll actually like, no vocabulary required.
Wine is one of the great everyday pleasures, and it's been kept behind glass for too long by people who made it feel like a club you weren't invited to. We think that's a shame, and a little dumb.
The door is open. Come find what you love.
Quiet intelligence. It does the reading; you do the tasting.
Point it at the list tonight.
Read this far? sommelai is still finding its shape, and there's a TestFlight beta for the people who want a hand in it. Join the beta on TestFlight