Have you been to a restaurant that uses an iPad to present its wine list to its patrons?
Below is the Decanter Magazine article I read Today on this very subject. Although in its infancy, the digital wine list should be here to stay. As with most new technology, the concept of a digital wine list appeals to me. As with digital magazines and newspapers, some folks will always prefer to see the “Carte du Vin” in a book or paper format.
Enjoy the article and decide what you think….
The trend that started at the beginning of the century with Aureole in Las Vegas, the contents of whose four-storey, stainless-steel-and-glass wine tower that diners browse via an ‘ewinebook’, has now gone global, Brian St Pierre writes in the latest issue of Decanter.
‘These days, I’m using an iPad more than a corkscrew,’ Ronan Sayburn MS, wine director for the Hotel du Vin chain, told St Pierre. ‘We’re trialling them in Birmingham and 90% of our customers have liked them.’
The list of UK restaurants that now present customers with an iPad instead of a paper wine list is gettting longer every day: several of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, Asian-fusion restaurant Australasia in Manchester, London’s Rib Room, and the Vineyard,which has one of the most comprehensive American wine lists in the country.
‘It will give our guests the opportunity to better look at our long wine list and easily access their preferences, but without replacing our interaction,’ Vineyard head sommelier Yohann Jousselin said.
Worldwide, St Pierre namechecks restuarants from New York (Thomas Keller’s Per Se), Argentina (La Bourgogne at the Alvear Palace among some 80 others), Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Spain and points between that have adopted the iPad.
Even France, he writes, is succumbing to the lure of the tablet. While one sommelier is quoted as saying the iPad will never catch on, St Pierre is able to list half a dozen restaurants, starting with Les Tablettes in Paris, that use it.
Not everyone is equally keen, however, with several high-ranking professionals expressing doubt.
Andrew Connor, of Luytens restaurant in London, is one. ‘Too many times technology has let me down,’ he says. ‘Air-conditioning broken, reservation systems crashed, lights gone crazy – I prefer a low-tech solution where possible.’
Read the whole article in the March issue of Decanter, on sale now and available on iPad.
