What Sommo Cannot Know

The best methodology pages spend as much ink on what a model cannot know as on what it can. So does this one. I build Sommo to be genuinely useful, which means being genuinely honest about its edges. Here they are, in plain sight.

AI is guidance, not oracle

Sommo is a very well-read assistant, not an infallible one. It can sharpen your choice, explain a region, and point you at the right bottle far faster than you could alone. It cannot taste your specific bottle, on this night, with this meal, through your palate. Always trust your own glass over the app. The recommendation is a starting point; you are the judge.

Grounding has edges

Every recommendation is checked against a hand-maintained library of real wines, which is why Sommo does not invent estates. But grounding is not omniscience: a brand-new grower, a tiny négociant bottling, or a label that exists nowhere in the data is a genuine edge case. When Sommo cannot ground a name, it is built to say it is unsure rather than fabricate one. I argued the wider point in the truth about AI wine apps, and the mechanics are on the label scanning page.

Drinking windows are estimates

A drinking window is a forecast, and forecasts carry assumptions:

• It assumes good, stable storage it cannot actually see.
• It reflects broad consensus, not your particular taste for younger or older wine.
• It cannot foresee a faulty cork ending a bottle early.

Per-bottle storage history and windows tuned to your own palate are being built, but they are not shipped yet, so today the window describes the wine, not your cellar. A wide window with low confidence is the app being honest, not vague.

Scanning has blind spots

Label scanning is strong on clear front labels of wines that exist in the library. It struggles with damaged or stained labels, very obscure producers, non-vintage bottles, and non-Latin or heavily stylised scripts. In every one of those, a blank is the honest answer where a guess would be the dishonest one.

WSET grading is a study aid

The typed WSET grading marks free-text answers like an examiner and is a powerful way to practise. It is not the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, does not certify you, and does not register you for a sitting. It makes the studying far more effective; it does not replace the official course or qualification.

Not a social network

Sommo is a notebook, not a feed. There are no followers, no public ratings, no leaderboards. If you want a crowd-sourced popularity score, apps like Vivino and Delectable are built for exactly that. Sommo deliberately is not: it learns from your journal, not the crowd’s, which is a strength for personalisation and a non-feature if community is what you are after.

One platform, done well

Sommo is iPhone and iPad today. It is built by one person, and one platform shipped well beats two shipped badly. An Android version is being scoped honestly, and a web companion sits on the longer roadmap. No dates are promised until the quality is there. The cellar and menu scoring features, in particular, are iOS-first for now.

Why I write this down

A tool you can trust is one that tells you where it stops. None of the above is hidden in a settings menu or a terms page; it is here, on the same site that markets the app, because that is what honest looks like. If anything here changes, this page changes with it.

Frequently asked.