Restaurant Wine List Scanner: Score Menu

Never Overpay for Bad Wine Again

Restaurant wine lists are intimidating. Markups are steep. Descriptions are minimal, when they exist at all. You squint at unfamiliar regions, skim past prices that feel arbitrary, and often land on the second-cheapest bottle, hoping for the best and hoping nobody asks why you picked it. Sommo changes that. Menu scoring turns an opaque list into something you can read, compare, and trust.

Sommo Score Menu scans a restaurant wine list. With Premium, Score Menu gives every wine it reads on the list a quality score. It is a Premium feature for the moment when you want to compare a list rather than look up each bottle in turn.

Photograph the wine names and prices clearly, review the wines Sommo has read, then open the details for bottles that interest you. Keep your budget and the meal in mind as you compare, and ask the restaurant to confirm the vintage and availability before you order.

If I know the shop price of a bottle, I use the wine markup calculator to put its list price in context.

Download Sommo for your next dinner, or see Premium pricing.

Score Menu or Menu Picks?

Score Menu gives you a scored list. The separate menu-picks flow helps you choose from a photo, with meal and taste context when supplied; those scans use the shared Free allowance of 5 lifetime scans per device. Premium includes unlimited scans as well as Score Menu.

If you want the whole dinner workflow, from the first choice to remembering the bottle afterwards, see Sommo for restaurant diners.

How It Works

Scan the Menu

Open Sommo, point your camera at the wine menu, and tap scan. Sommo reads the list whether it is printed, chalked up, or shown on a screen, and identifies the wines (and prices, when they are visible) so you are not retyping anything by hand.

AI Scores Every Wine

Each wine on the list gets an AI score that reflects quality, value at the listed price, and how well it fits the kind of food the restaurant serves. You see the full list scored in one pass, so you are comparing bottles on a level field instead of guessing from a single vague line of text.

Tap for Details

Tap any wine to expand it. You get full tasting notes, grape varieties, regional context, and food pairing suggestions you can actually use at the table, not generic blurbs copied from the back of a shelf talker.

Make Your Pick

Use the scores and detail to choose with confidence. Call out a standout bottle, find a hidden gem that punches above its price, or steer the group away from an overpriced pour. Ordering wine stops feeling like a quiz you did not revise for.

What the Scores Tell You

Sommo’s AI weighs signals that matter on a real list: producer reputation, vintage where it counts, appellation and style. It judges value for money against the price printed in front of you, not a generic retail guess. It also considers how well each wine suits the restaurant’s cuisine, so a bottle that shines at a steakhouse might read differently on a seafood-led menu. Top picks are highlighted so you can spot the gems in seconds.

Alternatives and Expansions

When you tap a scored wine, you can explore alternatives in a similar style that might also appear on the same menu. That makes it easier to pivot if your first choice is unavailable, out of budget, or split across tastes at the table, without starting your search from scratch.

If you run a restaurant, Sommo Carte for restaurants explains the separate guest-facing pairing service for your own wine list.

A Premium Feature Worth Having

Menu scoring is available to Premium subscribers. It pairs naturally with AI wine scanning: scan labels in the shop, scan menus when you sit down to eat. Your wine journal remembers what you drank, so the evening becomes part of your ongoing wine story rather than another bottle you forget by Monday.

Keep the Bottle You Would Order Again

Once the wine arrives, record your own reaction in the wine journal. A note about the dish and whether you would buy the bottle again makes your next restaurant choice more personal. Free includes 30-day journal history; Premium keeps your full history available.

Frequently asked.