My Head Somm
A personal AI sommelier that pairs wine to your meal — or food to your bottle — guided by a sensory-driven persona that makes wine discovery feel elevated and approachable.
The Challenge: The Wine Wall
Walk into any restaurant with a 200-bottle wine list and watch what happens. Most guests scan for a name they recognize, pick the second-cheapest option, and move on. It’s not that they don’t care — it’s that the gap between curiosity and confidence is too wide.
Sommeliers solve this problem, but most restaurants don’t have one on the floor. And the apps that try to fill the gap tend to feel like databases, not guides. A wine score and a flavor wheel don’t help when you’re sitting across from someone, looking at a menu, and just want a good pairing for the halibut.
The goal for My Head Somm was to put a knowledgeable, opinionated sommelier in the diner’s pocket — one that understands what they’re eating, what they prefer, and what they’d rather avoid.
The Solution: A Sommelier That Fits in Your Pocket
Built by My Pub Marketing LLC, My Head Somm handles the decision load of wine pairing through:
Dual Pairing Modes: “Pair My Meal” takes a dish description, wine color, style, price tier, and varietal preferences and returns curated recommendations with rationales. “Pair My Wine” works in reverse — input a bottle and get food pairings by course.
The Decantrix Persona: Every interaction is guided by Decantrix, an AI sommelier persona that speaks in sensory, confident language. Not a generic chatbot — a character with a voice, a worldview, and the calm authority of someone who has tasted widely and studied deeply.
My Cellar — Offline Tasting Notes: A private, offline-first journal built to WSET professional standards. Users record appearance, nose, palate, and conclusion for every wine, stored locally on the device. No account required. No data leaves the phone.
The Design: Digital Cellar Aesthetics
My Head Somm is designed for the environment where it’s used — low-light dining rooms and tasting bars. Dark mode is the default. Typography uses Playfair Display for a refined editorial feel. Haptic feedback confirms saves and interactions without pulling attention from the table.
The persona integration goes beyond copy. Loading states say “Consulting the archives…” Pairing results include “The Decantrix Secret” — contextual sommelier tips on serving temperature, decanting time, and glassware. The goal was to make the app feel less like software and more like a quiet conversation with someone who knows wine.
How It’s Built
A few things that matter to operators, translated out of technical language:
It works on bad restaurant Wi-Fi. The pairing engine calls the AI; the tasting journal doesn’t. If the connection drops mid-service, guests can still log notes. Nothing is lost.
No account required. Tasting notes live on the guest’s phone. Nothing is uploaded, synced to a server, or tied to an email address. That’s a feature, not a limitation — guests in a tasting room don’t want to create another login.
The AI gives consistent answers. It isn’t generating free-form text that varies unpredictably. Every pairing recommendation follows a structured format — varietal, rationale, serving notes — so the experience is the same whether a guest uses it Tuesday afternoon or Saturday night at capacity.
No ads, no tracking, no third-party data collection. The same philosophy behind My Head Chef: build a tool that does what it says, then get out of the way.
Why This Matters for Hospitality
My Head Somm isn’t just a consumer app — it’s a proof of concept for how AI can serve the hospitality industry without replacing the human element.
For operators, the implications are practical:
Tasting room staff can use the pairing engine to support guests during busy pours when the most experienced team member is already occupied.
Wine bar owners can point curious guests to the app instead of printing pairing guides that go stale the moment the by-the-glass list changes.
Wine club managers can see how AI-assisted discovery increases engagement — members who understand what they’re drinking tend to stay longer and buy more.
The Decantrix persona was designed to be reusable across hospitality contexts: tasting room kiosks, event experiences, educational tools, and menu-planning systems. The character is consistent; the deployment is flexible.
Where It Fits
My Pub Marketing builds digital systems for independent hospitality operators. My Head Somm demonstrates what that looks like when applied to the guest experience itself — not just the back-office operations.
It sits alongside My Head Chef in a portfolio of builder-led, AI-powered tools that prioritize utility over engagement metrics. No ads. No subscription wall. No data harvesting. Just a tool that does what it says, built by someone who works the tasting room floor and understands what guests actually need when they’re staring at a wine list.
Project Specs
- Platform: iOS — free on the App Store. Android coming soon.
- Intelligence: Google Gemini — structured pairing recommendations, not open-ended chat.
- Persona: Decantrix — custom AI sommelier character.
- Tasting Journal: Offline, private, WSET-standard fields. No account required.
- Philosophy: Builder-led, utility-first, hospitality-native.
Have a similar challenge?
Every engagement starts with a fixed-price DTC audit and 90-day roadmap.
Book a Discovery Call