Introduction
How can you use AI to get wine and food pairing advice? Will using AI make wine styles and flavours less diverse? Will AI replace wine writers?
In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Dina Blikshteyn, a lawyer who specializes in how artificial intelligence and machine learning is changing the wine world.
Note: Our discussion is not intended to be a substitute for professional legal advice and is for informational purposes only.
You can find the wines we discussed here.
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Highlights
- Is there a risk that using AI tools will make wine taste more uniform?
- How can AI-enabled machines help to vineyards to go organic?
- What’s involved in making AI models more accurate in wine analysis?
- How can AI be utilized to identify anomalies and potential fraud in the wine industry?
- Can AI make appropriate wine and food pairing recommendations?
- What are the copyright implications of AI-generated content?
- Is there a role for AI in the world of wine critics?
- How can trade secrets be used to protect AI models, specifically around wine recommendations?
- How will AI be used in tasting rooms of the future?
Key Takeaways
- I was interested to learn about the ways AI can give wine and food pairing tips, but I am immensely relieved that AI won’t be replacing me any time soon.
- Used the right way, AI won’t make wine styles and flavours less diverse. Rather it should expand them if the tool is used to make wine better.
- I was fascinated with her description of how AI is being used to grow grapes and all aspects of the process. It’ll be interesting to see if drones become a common sight over the vineyards… maybe they’ll invent one to chase away annoying tourists – just the pesky ones, of course.
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About Dina Blikshteyn
Dina Blikshteyn is a partner in the Intellectual Property Practice Group in the New York law office of Haynes Boone. Dina focuses on artificial intelligence and machine learning, cloud computing, cyber security, web applications, algorithms, multimedia and video streaming, among other technologies. She is also a co-chair of the artificial intelligence practice at the firm. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Dina developed high-frequency trading systems that traded financial instruments on domestic and international exchanges.
Resources
- Connect with Dina Blikshteyn
- Electric Wine Opener
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 242: How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Change the Wines Your Drink with Dina Blikshteyn
- Diary of a Book Launch: An Insider Peek from Idea to Publication
- Wine Witch on Fire Free Companion Guide for Book Clubs
- My Books:
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 52: Visiting Burgundy and Tasting Barolo with Matt Cauz
- My new class The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner And How To Fix Them Forever
Tag Me on Social
Tag me on social media if you enjoyed the episode:
- @nataliemaclean and @natdecants on Facebook
- @nataliemaclean on Twitter
- @nataliemacleanwine on Instagram
- @nataliemaclean on LinkedIn
- Email Me at [email protected]
Thirsty for more?
- Sign up for my free online wine video class where I’ll walk you through The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!)
- You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
- The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.
Transcript
Dina Blikshteyn (00:00):
I was actually surprised initially that AI was being used in the wine industry. I was expecting a typical case where AI is being used for advertising or for analyzing what kind of wine a person would like. There’s actually all this research going on into using AI to grow grapes. You can have robots taking pictures and analyzing where the grapes get enough water.
Natalie MacLean (00:27):
All aspects of the process. And if you imagine the future 10 years from now, just pure science fiction if you will, how do you think the wine industry might be using AI as it develops?
Dina Blikshteyn (00:39):
It would be using different machines at the vineyards. If you can program drones to fly and take pictures, that relieves you of the whole issue with the soil being compacted.
Natalie MacLean (00:50):
I could see the specialty drone for chasing Starlings away and then another drone for leading the deer back into the forest.
Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean. And each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle please, and let’s get started.
(01:46):
Welcome to episode 243. How can you use artificial intelligence (AI) to get wine and food pairing advice? Will AI make wine styles and flavours less diverse? And will AI replace wine writers? Oh my gosh, what a nightmare scenario that one would be. In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions and more in Part Two of my chat with Dina Blikshetyn, a lawyer who specializes on how artificial intelligence and machine learning is changing the wine world. You don’t have to have listened to Part One from last week first, but I hope you’ll go back if you missed it after you finish this one.
(02:32):
So even though my new memoir Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much takes place during my worst vintage – personally and professionally – I didn’t want to lose my love of wine and the people in the industry. As I write in my book, most of my experience in the wine industry has been positive, filled with moments of sensual delight, creative challenge, and human kindness. It allowed me to explore the world traveling to places I never could as a child. It also made me more worldly experiencing cultures so different from my small town upbringing. In turn, I believe I’ve broadened the minds of those who read my work. Many of them, including me, would never pick up a thick tome on agriculture, commerce, history, politics, law, religion, relationships, or sexism. But they learn about those topics through my quote “wine books”.
I think you could create a liberal arts degree with wine as the hub connecting the spokes of just about all human endeavor. Do you ever think of wine that way? Let me know.
Here’s a review from Susan Bush in New Zealand. “I loved her latest book. It’s beautifully written, well-planned, humorous, yet serious on a subject that is so relevant these days. What happened to her is unbelievable. Yet sadly, these days, it is often the norm. Social media has a lot to answer for. It’s wonderful to read how she not only overcame the despicable behaviour of some others, but also rose above and left them on the back foot. So lovely to know that her son’s relationship with her is strong and that she has her own life on a great plain as well. I wish her and her family all the very best today and every day”. Thank you, Susan.
If you’ve read the book, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. If you haven’t got your copy yet and would like to support it and this podcast, please order it from any online book retailer no matter where you live. Every little bit helps spread the message. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at NatalieMaclean.com/243. Okay, on with the show,
Natalie MacLean (04:58):
Do you think there’s any risk that using AI tools will make wine taste more uniform? Because there’ll be so much data and new learning that especially from different sources that wine may, I don’t know, lose its soul or lose the human intuition part of it. I mean, certain university programs have been accused of leaning too far into science and not enough on the art of wine making. Do you think you could see something similar happening here?
Dina Blikshteyn (05:26):
I can definitely see it, right. I can also see more if everyone is using the same model. If you have 10 different wineries using 10 different models, they’ll be trained on different data. The wine will taste differently.
Natalie MacLean (05:41):
True.
Dina Blikshteyn (05:42):
On the other hand, there’s also human component to it. AI can give you a result. You don’t have to take that result. You can have one contribution, whatever it is to that result to make something more unique. And I think that’s where the part of making the wine also comes in. AI can do a lot of analytics to make your job simpler, but that final component, that final change that the winery can make, may not be replicated by ai.
Natalie MacLean (06:12):
Yes, absolutely. So now there are weeding robots and others that micro spray plants and detect disease. Do you think this will cut down on the amount of fungicides and herbicides and pesticides used in vineyards?
Dina Blikshteyn (06:26):
It absolutely can because all that detection can just occur earlier. And that’s a good thing about the machines. They can go through the vineyard. They don’t get tired. So you program them to go through the vineyard, that’s what they’ll do. They’ll go through the vineyard and they’ll detect the diseases or whatever what else they’re programmed to do. So I think they definitely can increase in detecting something earlier. Whereas with humans, we get tired. It may be hot, it may be raining, whatever it is. The detection just may not occur as quickly.
Natalie MacLean (06:59):
Yes, that’s true. No lunch breaks for AI. Do you think it could also help more vineyards to go organic because they’re being so micromanaged at the individual vine level?
Dina Blikshteyn (07:10):
It can. I don’t see why not. Possibly.
Natalie MacLean (07:12):
But.
Dina Blikshteyn (07:13):
A lot of it is also a business decision, right. AI, all those machines, it’s a tool. It’s an extra tool that the wineries can use.
Natalie MacLean (07:23):
Yeah. Do you see any parallels between what’s happening now with these AI machines in the vineyard and sort of customized medicine where drugs are developed for each person, perhaps based on their own unique DNA?
Dina Blikshteyn (07:35):
Yes, because on a very basic level it could be the same or similar AI model that’s just trained on different data. You want the model to perform in the winery, you train it on the wine related data. You want it to perform in healthcare, you’ll be training it on different types of data. Data that’s more specific to human health.
Natalie MacLean (07:58):
Is AI being used at all to detect fraud and counterfeit bottles in the wine world?
Dina Blikshteyn (08:03):
Well, AI is definitely being used to detect fraud. And it can’t really say this is fraud, this is not fraud. What it can say is, I’ve looked at all these patterns, I looked at all these data, and I detected an anomaly. Something is wrong. Something is different. Once AI detects that – whether it’s counterfeit bottle, whether it’s the shape or the colour or the sticker – it’s going to be up to the human to further examine it. So where the value add is AI can look at a lot of data much quicker and just identify those anomalies much quicker. So it can condense this huge set of data to a smaller set of data. And then what the human comes in and actually say, well, this looks like counterfeit and this is not.
Natalie MacLean (08:51):
Right. Almost reminds me of radiologists interpreting the results. Could probably compress that process and then narrow down the field for the expert to come in and say, oh, yes, there’s a problem here. We need to do more tests.
Dina Blikshteyn (09:04):
And it’s actually a great example, Natalie, because there are AI analytics that go into radiology right now.
Natalie MacLean
Oh, okay.
Dina Blikshteyn
Yeah. I might be off topic, but it’s the same analysis. You can have a radiologist to do an analysis on an x-ray and you can put that same x-ray through an AI model and see if they come up with the same result.
Natalie MacLean (09:25):
Wow. I guess radiologists should be aware of their drawings too, except the best ones. Oh boy. And is AI being used to detect smoke taint from wildfires?
Dina Blikshteyn (09:38):
It can.
Natalie MacLean (09:41):
And how would it do that?
Dina Blikshteyn (09:42):
So it’s going back to data just like anything else, right. You have wine with smoke taint. You have wine without smoke tank. You do the chemical breakdown on it. You pass it through the model and you train the model to tell you is there a smoke tank or is there is no smoke team?
Natalie MacLean (10:01):
Yeah. I’m curious if it will become more refined in the future to know when smoke taint is not perceptible to consumers. But it is perceptible, it’s existing in the wine. And if it can predict things like this will express itself as full-blown smoke taint, don’t sell this wine; versus this is going to remain below noticeable levels, this is okay to put to market presuming that there are no health issues related. It would be interesting.
Dina Blikshteyn (10:27):
I mean to me it sounds just a perfect, almost like a fine tuning example where you have your ready-made model and then you give it data. You train it on data of wines that have smoked taint. Whether it’s the chemical composition or whether it’s another criteria, right, and a wine that doesn’t. And the degree after that after you train that model, all you have to do is pass the wine through it and you get a very nice classifier. You can have yes or no, right, simple. Or if you want to have on a more granular level, is it yes or no is this the maybe this is good enough. And so you can sort of train that model to give you different classifications.
Natalie MacLean (11:10):
Interesting. And maybe in the future, again what to do to fix it if anything? If it can be fixed? Some sort of taint or other faults. So we’ve seen provocative headlines can AI really taste wine. Is this simply cataloging thousands of flavour components based on human input and then, for example, predicting which foods might pair best with a particular wine?
Dina Blikshteyn (11:33):
I think that’s how you would start. And it depends how granular you want the model to be. Do you want to train the model on user experience? Certain types of wine will go with certain types of food? Certain people like certain types of wines? And based on that, you’ll do a prediction? Or do you want to go into a more granular level, actually do the breakdown, go into the chemical breakdown of the wine, go into a chemical breakdown of the palate, and then train it on that data? I mean, regardless how granular you will get, yes the model will tell you you will probably like these five wines with these five types of food.
Natalie MacLean (12:16):
And so you’ve mentioned previously in an article that you wrote that Meredith Corporation, which is a large publishing company which also owns AllRecipes.com, partnered with Ste. Michelle Wine Estates to pair wines and recipes for site visitors. So how is this I guess perhaps it comes back to the same answer, but I’ve seen lots of surveys online where they ask you about your taste preferences. If you like tea, then you’ll tend to Pinot Noir. If you like coffee, then go for Cabernet with the oak aging. How is this AI different? Does it just have lots more input than those simpler surveys? Or is there any other difference?
Dina Blikshteyn (12:51):
Oh, I think that’s really it. But part of it is more complex inputs or more complex training data or breaking down training data. What I think what you’ve described is more of just a rules-based approach.
Natalie MacLean
Right.
Dina Bliksheteyn
Whereas AI is just being trained in a lot more data to give you more granular results.
Natalie MacLean (13:10):
Sure.
Dina Blikshteyn (13:11):
It’s another way of doing things.
Natalie MacLean (13:13):
Yeah, absolutely. And are the actual pairings that Meredith and Ste. Michelle generate through their AI, are they copyrighted or just the human design webpage on which they appear? So in other words, could someone take all the pairings that are generated on the AllRecipes website and just put them on a different human designed webpage?
Dina Blikshteyn (13:36):
Yeah, that is a very loaded question.
Natalie MacLean (13:39):
I like to ask loaded questions.
Dina Blikshteyn (13:43):
So the way the law is right now. And I wouldn’t say it’s a law, this just came out out of the United States Copyright Office, I believe either in March or in May. I don’t remember. They essentially said that anything generated by an AI model cannot be copyrighted. That’s their guidance. It’s not statutory yet, but that’s what they’re saying. If AI model created it, you can’t copyright it.
Natalie MacLean (14:09):
Because copyright has to be attributable to a human?
Dina Blikshteyn (14:11):
That’s right. You have to have an author. Of course, there is a but. So if something is generated by AI, such as a recipe, if there is a human contribution on top of it, you can copyright that human contribution. And then when you file for a copyright, you have to specify this has been created by AI and this has been created by an author.
Natalie MacLean (14:36):
So it still leaves open that question that someone could take the pairings, potentially until it’s tested in court, and just put them on another website.
Dina Blikshteyn (14:44):
Right unless you know had a human contribution. And you change the pairings a little bit. You can add something.
Natalie MacLean (14:50):
Oh, yeah, you could tweak the final layer. Right.
Dina Blikshteyn (14:52):
That final layer.
Natalie MacLean (14:53):
Okay. Do you think that AI could eventually replace wine writers, especially those who are just mostly review wines? Like give a straight description. It’s got blackberries. It’s got cassis. It’s got whatever. Or it pairs with x, x, and x. I’m not talking about long form story narrative driven writers. But do you think it could replace largely the traditional wine critic?
Dina Blikshteyn (15:20):
I think it may to some extent. And I think anyone who used ChatGPT has tested that theory.
Natalie MacLean
Yes.
Dina Bliksheteyn
Where you have a writer’s book or you’re trying to write something and you put it into ChatGPT and it’ll spit out a paragraph for you.
Natalie MacLean (15:34):
Yeah. True.
Dina Blikshteyn (15:35):
But how perfect is that paragraph?
Natalie MacLean
That’s right.
Dina Bliksheteyn
Are you just going to copy and paste it, or are you still going to revise and modify it? So to answer your question, can it replace food critics? Yes. Can it really replace really good food critics to have a humongous knowledge of wine? Probably not.
Natalie MacLean (15:59):
Yeah. I see two areas where the human intervention would come in at the end and that would be fact checking for accuracy, because we know at least ChatGPT will just often, not often I don’t know what the frequency is, but will give you factual errors. And then the finessing of the language itself, which can be a bit stilted.
Dina Blikshteyn (16:19):
And there’s actually a story with this.
Natalie MacLean
Oh, yeah?
Dina Blikshteyn
We had an attorney who use ChatGPT to cite check cases. And ChatGPT created a case that was later submitted to the court and the other side caught it. So now it’s became, I understand it’s a human error, but AI is the tool like anything else.
Natalie MacLean (16:42):
So this was a totally made up case? It didn’t exist?
Dina Blikshteyn (16:45):
It was a totally made up case that was cited to the court.
Natalie MacLean
That’s crazy. Wow.
Dina Blikshteyn
So the attorney do it intentionally. Yeah, probably not. Was it on the attorney to check that this is a real case and do something more than asking ChatGPT is this a real case? Absolutely.
Natalie MacLean (17:02):
Yes.
Dina Blikshteyn (17:02):
We all have tools. Doesn’t mean those tools are right a hundred percent of the time, whether it’s AI or not. And it’s, at least in my profession, it’s always on the attorney to check that something is correct.
Natalie MacLean (17:15):
Sure. Well, I did a test with ChatGPT and I said write me a wine book. And it started with the table of contents, the essential grapes, the wine regions, and it just kept going. And it was like wow it was incredible. And it wrote a book, like the whole book. I don’t know in how many minutes, but it didn’t take long.
Dina Blikshteyn (17:33):
Yeah. So I mean, you write really great at a third grade level, maybe at the sixth grade level. But I think for creative writing the question becomes, is it creative enough? Because at least ChatGPT, I mean it’s trained on books, it’s trained on documents, it’s trained on all this literature. But then there’s still a question, how creative can it be?
Natalie MacLean (17:56):
And again, goes back to those inputs.
Dina Blikshteyn (17:59):
Exactly. Yes. More creative than a human. You may get there. I mean, I’m still a believer that there’s a human contribution to whatever AI’s creating.
Natalie MacLean (18:09):
Oh, let’s hold onto that hope. It’d be interesting to say write me a wine book in the style of Charles Dickens with a little bit of Brontë thrown in to see what they would do based on books at a copyright. But anyway, rabbit hole. I just love thinking about the what if scenarios here. So have there been any instances in the wine world with AI that have led to any sort of big mistakes or anything like that?
Dina Blikshteyn (18:31):
I mean, I haven’t really heard of any. I think if there is a mistake, unless it becomes public, it may be suppressed so we’ll never know. But at the same time, look if you’re experimenting with AI, it will make mistakes either because the data set is incomplete or for whatever reason. I’ll give you an example with a Tesla, right.
Natalie MacLean
Okay.
Dina Blikshteyn
So this was on the news. You have a Tesla driving on the highway, right. It breaks because there is a setting sun. It confused that setting sun with a yellow light, right. I mean, how often can that happen? When you’re driving, apparently it can. And that’s a test case that you normally would not account for, but it happens. So it’s the same as any technology. Can something like that happen at a winery? Absolutely, right. You may not recognize that a vine is a vine just because there is glare, and you can have a machine go over that vine.
Natalie MacLean (19:34):
Wow. That’s a good example. And what about for those seeking to protect their IP that they developed via AI? Is the answer developing a trademark for that IP that was developed that way? The way Apple is done with Siri and Amazon with Alexa?
Dina Blikshteyn (19:51):
In terms of IP, there’s different ways you can protect products. There is copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets. And based on the technology you use, I guess some forms of protection may be better than others. So if your value is in the data and not in the model itself, I mean trade secret may be the best protection you can have. You’re not protecting the output, you’re protecting the what’s going into the model. It’s not just the dataset. It’s also which data is inside that dataset, you want to have the model weigh more or less. So if the model is doing a recommendation on how to create a bottle of wine based on data, that may be where the trade secret is, or at least that data should be, protected with a trade secret.
Natalie MacLean (20:43):
Yeah, I can see that being applicable to wine because it all the proprietary blends. And how long do you let those grapes hang before you harvest? That’s all I would think trade secret.
Dina Blikshteyn (20:52):
Exactly. If you are protecting the brand trademark protection, especially if a vineyard is well known and the wine is well known. So those bottles of wine that are being sold in the stores, that means that may be more amenable to trademark protection. Recipes, wine pairings, at least the human component to it, that’s copyright protection. If you want to talk about patents, the machines that go through the vineyard, the analytics, how they take pictures, potentially the AI models themselves, that may be more a amenable to patent protection.
Natalie MacLean (21:32):
Wow. Different tools for different use cases. Yeah, absolutely. How do you think AI will change the tasting room of the future, beyond collecting consumer data and trying to customize the experience for people who visit, other innovative changes you see happening?
Dina Blikshteyn (21:49):
It may create a different layout for the room. And there’s actually a lot of research going on in this space too. Sort of creating a virtual world that’s the replica of a physical world, and using that virtual world to create a room or a tasting and everything that would either enhance the user experience or potentially have people buy more wine or more of certain types of wine. And then transform that back into the physical world.
Natalie MacLean (22:21):
I think we can iterate back and forth.
Dina Blikshteyn (22:22):
Back and forth. So there may be a lot of analytics that are going on going on just on a different level.
Natalie MacLean (22:30):
Sure. If you had people using Apple’s new headset, augmented reality or virtual reality, and then get that data feeding in how as you say designing your tasting room or the flow of it. And then vice versa use what people actually do once they get to your physical tasting room to change how you create your VR or AR models. That would be kind of cool.
Dina Blikshteyn (22:52):
Yeah. It’s a question goes a step further. Right now you can just have a device, right. It’ll take dimensions of a room or whatever’s in the room. You transport it into your virtual room. You can play with it, see what works, see what doesn’t, see what can be a business value add. And then you transform it right back.
Natalie MacLean (23:11):
Wow. Cool. What’s the most surprising insight you’ve discovered about AI and wine?
Dina Blikshteyn (23:17):
I was actually surprised initially that AI was being used in the wine industry.
Natalie MacLean (23:23):
Oh, really?
Dina Blikshteyn (23:23):
I mean, I was expecting I guess your typical case where AI is being used for advertising or for analyzing what kind of wine a person would like. I was surprised by the other component that there’s actually all this research going on into using AI to grow grapes. Because when I first read about you can have robots taking pictures and analyzing where the grapes get enough water. I mean, to me that was eyeopening.
Natalie MacLean (23:53):
Yeah, for sure. All aspects of the process. And if you imagine the future 10 years from now, just pure science fiction if you will, how do you think the wine industry might be using AI as it develops?
Dina Blikshteyn (24:07):
I mean, I would think it would be using different machines at the vineyards. Whether those are actual machines that drive through the vineyard or take it up a step further, whether it’s drones. Because if you can program drones to fly and take pictures, I mean that sort of relieves you of the whole issue with the soil being compacted.
Natalie MacLean (24:29):
Yes.
Dina Blikshteyn (24:30):
And I think you sort of starting to see some of it now, especially when you have parades. You have drones being very creative that where they can make different sculptures in the air. It’s the same technology if you think about it. Can we use that in the vineyards? Probably. I mean, is it cost prohibitive? Probably. But it doesn’t mean that in the next 10 years, the cost won’t come down as well.
Natalie MacLean (24:56):
Yeah. Wow. I could see the drones. There’d be a specialty drone for chasing starlings away and then another drone for I don’t know leading the deer back into the forest. Cool. That’s fascinating. Dina, let’s just do a quick lightning round to wrap up here. Do you have a favorite wine book?
Dina Blikshteyn (25:15):
I don’t have a wine book, but I have a favorite wine movie.
Natalie MacLean (25:19):
Oh, which one?
Dina Blikshteyn (25:20):
So I love Walk in the Clouds.
Natalie MacLean (25:22):
Ah, Keanu Reeves.
Dina Blikshteyn (25:24):
Keanu Reeves. It’s mid nineties when it came out. You know what resonated with me was that whole crushing grape scene.
Natalie MacLean (25:32):
Yes.
Dina Blikshteyn (25:33):
Where they’re all in trying to crush the wine.
Natalie MacLean (25:36):
Yeah. It’s very sensual. They’re all in those big vats and the women have their dresses hoisted up to their thighs. There’s music and it’s very seemingly traditional.
Dina Blikshteyn (25:47):
Yeah. It was such a beautiful scene.
Natalie MacLean (25:49):
It is very sensory rich. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have a most useful wine gadget you’ve discovered?
Dina Blikshteyn (25:56):
I actually do. And okay. I have it right here.
Natalie MacLean
Oh, you have it there. Great.
Dina Bliksheteyn
This is my electric wine opener.
Natalie MacLean (26:03):
Oh, okay.
Dina Blikshteyn (26:04):
And I love it because this again goes to my kids teasing me. Because every time I try to open the bottle of wine manually, either the cork will get stuck or something will break. So my husband actually got this for me.
Natalie MacLean (26:20):
Oh, how nice. Electric wine opener.
Dina Blikshteyn (26:22):
It’s been great.
Natalie MacLean (26:24):
Good. We’ll put a link in the show notes.
Dina Blikshteyn (26:26):
It’s very easy to open the wine, especially if you have a large gathering and I can have several bottles open. It’s painless and it works.
Natalie MacLean (26:34):
Absolutely. Your opener is key. If you entertain, or even if you write about wine, you could develop the equivalent of carpal tunnel syndrome if don’t have the right tools.
[Laughter]
Dina Blikshteyn (26:45):
That’s very true. Here you just need an electrical outlet and I need to keep it charged.
Natalie MacLean (26:50):
There you go. And we’ll put a link to that in the show notes if people are curious as to what gadget that is. If you could share bottle of wine with any person outside the wine world, living or dead, who would that be? And maybe even what wine would you share?
Dina Blikshteyn (27:04):
For me it is sort of like a loaded question.
Natalie MacLean (27:08):
Another one.
Dina Blikshteyn (27:09):
I’ll tell you why. So we had an incident in my daughter’s school today. Earlier this week where a teacher got fired – and she was an excellent teacher – essentially for having breast cancer.
Natalie MacLean (27:22):
Oh no. I’m so sorry to hear that.
Dina Blikshteyn (27:24):
Yes. And what they’re trying to do right now is make it seem like she wasn’t good enough. That she wasn’t a great teacher notwithstanding the fact that there were over 50 parents who signed a petition about how great she was. So if you’re asking me who I’d like to have a glass of wine with this week, I would say it would be her.
Natalie MacLean (27:48):
Oh, how nice. Wow. Well, I hope she makes it through. It sounds like she’s got a lot of support, so that’s good.
Dina Blikshteyn (27:55):
Definitely from the parents.
Natalie MacLean (27:57):
Yes. I would hope that would matter most. Last question, if you could put up a billboard in downtown Manhattan, what would it say?
Dina Blikshteyn (28:04):
It would have something with AI and a glass of wine.
Natalie MacLean (28:10):
And it would keep iterating. It would keep changing. So there wouldn’t be just one message, right?
Dina Blikshteyn (28:14):
Right. It would be like one of those picture frames where the picture constantly changes.
Natalie MacLean (28:19):
Oh, yes. Yes. That’s very AI ish, right? That’s great. Oh my gosh.
Dina Blikshteyn (28:23):
And then we know who analyze which picture the people looked at more or less.
Natalie MacLean (28:29):
Of course, what’s got most attention. I love it. As we wrap up our conversation, Dina, is there anything you wanted to mention that we haven’t covered?
Dina Blikshteyn (28:37):
No, Natalie. I actually like to thank you for having me on this show. This has been fantastic.
Natalie MacLen
My pleasure. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Dina Blikshteyn
I’m talking about my two favorite things, AI and wine.
Natalie MacLean (28:48):
Yes, absolutely. I think I’m a geek after your own heart, too. I love both tech and wine. How can people find you or get in touch with you online?
Dina Blikshteyn (28:57):
Finding me is very easy. You just need to Google my name and I will come up.
Natalie MacLean (29:03):
Okay.
Dina Blikshteyn (29:04):
I’m on the firm’s website. I’m also writing a lot of articles in the AI space. So if you Google me, I’m very easy to find.
Natalie MacLean (29:12):
Dina Blikshteyn.
Dina Blikshteyn (29:14):
That’s right.
Natalie MacLean (29:15):
Right. And we’ll put that in the show notes, too. The spelling and all and a link to your website of course. Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time here today, and I look forward to when we can chat again.
Dina Blikshteyn (29:26):
Yeah, me too, Natalie. And again, thank you for having me on this podcast.
Natalie MacLean (29:30):
Oh, my pleasure. Alright, cheers.
Natalie MacLean (29:38):
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed my chat with Dina. Here are my takeaways. Number one, I was interested to learn about how AI can give food and wine pairing tips, but I am immensely relieved that AI won’t be replacing me anytime soon. Number two, used in the right way, AI can make wine styles and flavours more diverse. It can expand them if the tool is used to make wine better. And number three, I was fascinated with her description of how AI is being used to grow grapes and many aspects of the wine making process.
Now, it’ll be interesting to see if the drones become a common site flying over vineyards. Maybe they’ll invent one to chase away annoying tourists, just the pesky ones of course. In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Dina, links to her website, the video version of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now no matter where you live. That’s all in the show notes at NatalieMacLean.com/243. Email me if you have a sip tip or [email protected].
If you missed episode 52, go back and take a listen. I chat about visiting Burgundy as well as tasting Barolo with Matt Cruz. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.
Natalie MacLean (31:05):
I’m asking the questions the reader would love to ask, but that person is not going to get into see Domaine de al Romanée-Conti. And the only reason, by the way, Matt, that I would get in to see Domaine Romanée-Conti is that Aubert de Villaine recognize how many readers I bring with me. It’s not me, it’s, it’s the readership that I bring with me. And so I’m trying to ask the questions they’d be dying to ask. And even if they were there, maybe they’d be too embarrassed to ask. So I’m a very, very nosy person but I’m also very shy. And so writing has given me the cover of being able to ask people things like, well, what is your greatest failure? What’d you learn from it? Those kinds of things that can be uncomfortable if you just sort of turned to someone at a dinner party and started down that road.
Natalie MacLean
If you like this episode, please email or tell one friend about it this week, especially someone who’d be interested in the wines, tips, and stories we shared you won’t want to miss next week when we chat with Dr. Winnie Bowman, an international wine and spirit judge, as well as a Cape Master. She joins me from her home in Camps Bay, South Africa. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps a wine delivered to you by a drone,
(32:35):
You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full-bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at NatalieMacLean.com/subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.
