Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

MAKING A SELECTION: At Your Fingertips

Computerized tablets make it easier for Aureole patrons to select a wine

Jaime Smith, a sommelier at Aureole in Mandalay Bay, updates the restaurant's computerized wine tablets. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Peter DeCarlo, a patron at Aureole, uses a wine tablet at the restaurant. DeCarlo says he quickly adapted to the device. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

A thicket of trees has been spared death, thanks to the paperless wine list at Aureole restaurants in Las Vegas and New York.

With more than 4,000 wine labels in the five wine cellars that serve the Aureole in Las Vegas -- the four-story wine tower in the center of the dining room is just the most visible one -- it would be a pulp-gobbling proposition to do a daily wine list on paper.

Instead, the Aureole restaurants present their wines to diners on lightweight, wireless, portable computer tablets. Guests use a stylus or fingertip to touch the screen to peruse pages, mark favorites and make final selections.

But wood-conserving environmentalism was not the prime goal of Andrew Bradbury, wine director of Aureole at Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. South, who devised the computerized system that has become the Aureole eWine Book.

"I've delivered something that adds value to the property," Bradbury says, noting that Mandalay Bay, which co-owns the restaurant with chef Charlie Palmer, fronted more than $100,000 to develop the computerized system.

Technophiles may want to know the system's specifics: Each tablet is a Compaq TC1000, which weighs less than three pounds. The tablet is equipped with a 40-gigabyte hard drive, 512 megabytes of RAM and runs on Windows XP. The system has its own server and backup server. "I have my own FCC license (for a dedicated frequency) with a repeater and transmitter," Bradbury says.

For diners, the eWine Book is open-ended. It packs a lot of information, but the user accesses only as much as he or she wishes. Brief wine reviews, simple graphics to depict a wine's flavor profile, even personal stories of various winemakers and wineries are available. (The tablet also shows live views of the dining room's wine tower so guests can watch whenever a "wine angel" employee is dispatched in harness to retrieve a bottle.)

For the restaurant itself, the eWine Book eliminates or streamlines work. "I can update wines on the fly," Bradbury explains. " `Oops, I missed a vintage. I can just add it in.' " Likewise, when a vintage sells out, staff can instantly remove it from the wine list.

Not only does the eWine Book help during dinner hours. After, Bradbury says, "we can (automatically) track what's moving, not moving," instead of manually entering purchase tallies into an inventory spreadsheet, which used to take hours.

The eWine Book has unusual marketing potential, too, for the restaurant, the casino that houses it and the wineries who supply it.

"I can capture instant feedback," Bradbury says. If a diner is thrilled by a wine choice, he can use the tablet to message wine staff to e-mail him the name of the wine and where consumers can purchase it. (The tablet doesn't have a keyboard; a user simply "writes" by hand with a stylus on the screen.)

The restaurant also programs the tablets with up to 10 "featured wines" per month. The purpose is to broaden the palate of diners with wines that are either Bradbury's personal favorites, or represent quality coming from obscure grape types or regions.

If diners want to hear about upcoming special events, the tablet can tell them. In a recent cross-promotion with Mandalay Bay, Aureole sent e-mail to addresses entered by diners, offering an exclusive deal that included dinner at Aureole, tickets to "Mamma Mia!" and a room at the hotel.

Similarly, Bradbury says he will communicate with patrons if a wine producer wants to extend special offers.

"It definitely felt different for me," says patron Peter DeCarlo of New York about his first try with the eWine Book. Founder of the Blimpie's sandwich-shop chain, DeCarlo describes himself as a regular at both Aureoles. He also describes himself as somewhat intimidated by both wine and computers.

But DeCarlo quickly adapted to the eWine Book. He likes both the graphics that show a wine's flavor profile and the capability to receive e-mail at home that features a new wine's name and retail source.

"It generates a lot of interest" among the members of a dinner party, is how Bradbury describes customer acceptance of the technology. After a brief introduction on how to operate the tablet, "people are smiling" as they pass the device around to make selections. The tablet doesn't replace, but supplements, a party's verbal contact with a sommelier.

For a wine list as extensive as Aureole's, Bradbury believes the computerized system is more customer-friendly than a paper list would be. "We have 23 pages of cabernet sauvignons, just U.S.," Bradbury notes.

The ease comes, in part, because each guest dictates how he or she wants to search for wines. Some diners pick the wine first. Some pick the food first, then select a wine to pair with the meal.

But a paper wine list is rigidly structured by either alphabet, region, vintage or price. With the eWine Book, a customer can search by any of those parameters. "You sort it the way you want it," Bradbury says. "This way, you're putting the consumer first."

Bradbury's scheme for depicting flavor profiles tries to avoid what he disparages as "winespeak." To rate a wine's acid level, for example, Bradbury uses the lay term of "crispness" -- with the crispness scale ranging from "brisk and racy" to "soft and round."

In the tablet's "pairing" section, guests can enter an appetizer or other food, then call up a list of compatible wines.

Asked whether the tablet's compendium of information slows down a dinner party's ordering of wine, Bradbury says that it may increase wine sales, because some guests gain confidence to order a different wine for each course.

John Burke, lead sommelier at Prime, a fine-dining restaurant at Bellagio, offers some comments on the concept of a computerized wine list.

"Those guys at Aureole are my heroes," says Burke, calling Bradbury and team culinary "frontiersmen."

On the other hand, he questions whether the combination of two esoteric bodies of knowledge -- wine and computers -- may put off some customers.

For wine enthusiasts who don't dine at Aureole, the restaurant has launched an Internet Web site: www.ewinetower.com. Many features of the computerized wine list are available on the Web site, including the prospect of e-mail communication with Aureole's wine staff.

Bradbury says he responds to queries, regardless of whether the writer has visited the restaurant: "You never know when someone may become a customer."