Winebits 736: AI ID checks, restaurant wine, “healthy wine”

This week’s wine news: Artificial intelligence and checking IDs, plus more changes for restaurant wine and “healthy wine” is hip

• Can AI card drinkers? An English Aldi is testing software that will scan customer faces to see if they’re old enough to buy wine, beer, spirits, and cigarettes. The store, in Greenwich near London, is the discount retailer’s version of Amazon’s infamous Go stores, where there are no employees and no checkout – save for someone who wants to buy wine. Technically, says the story, it’s not facial recognition software, since the image is deleted after it’s used. For what that’s worth. Also in the “If you say so” department: The software company claims its system is so accurate that there is less than a 1 percent change of a 17-year-old fooling it.

• Smaller wine lists? Restaurants are scaling back their wine lists in the wake of the pandemic, says Nation’s Restaurant News, The story is wordy and tries to position the changes as “adjustments,” but the sense is that the days of massive, many page wine lists are ending – if they haven’t ended already. The other change? Restaurants will be changing lists more frequently, so that there will always be new items on it to make up for having fewer wines.

• Healthy booze: I’m going to take a more detailed look at so-called “healthy wine” – the low- and no-alcohol labels that seem to be all the rage these days, as well light wine that’s made to have less calories. I mention this piece because it shows how trendy these things have become; it includes details about a liquor store in swinging Soho that only carries non-alcoholic booze as well as a dedicated TikTok for sober drinking and a woman who compiles non-alcoholic cocktail recipes.