AI sommelier Babette joins Colruyt's online drinks shop Boir
The chatbot sorts nearly 2,000 wines, beers, spirits and alcohol-free drinks by taste, occasion and budget. When a question gets difficult, it hands over to a human sommelier.
Boir, the online drinks shop of the Belgian retailer Colruyt Group, launched an AI sommelier called Babette on 1 October, a chatbot on boir.be that recommends bottles from a range of nearly 2,000 products according to the customer's taste, occasion and budget.
The range covers wine, beer, spirits and alcohol-free alternatives. Colruyt's announcement gives the kind of questions Babette is meant to answer: which wine goes with a mushroom risotto, which red makes a gift for under €20, what to pour at a barbecue. The same logic is applied to alcohol-free drinks, a category the company says many customers still find hard to navigate.
What the AI sommelier does and does not do
The chatbot handles the risotto pairing; the hard questions still go to a person.
The press release does not say which language model or technology partner sits behind Babette, nor whether it answers in Dutch, French or both. What it does spell out is the exit: when a question becomes too specific or complex, Babette passes the customer to customer service, which can put them in touch with Boir's own sommeliers. In other words, the AI sommelier handles the risotto and the humans keep the hard questions.
“Artificial intelligence helps navigate our range, while our experts remain available whenever looking for in-depth advice,” said Jeroen Van Belleghem, manager of Boir, in the company statement reported by RetailDetail. Colruyt frames the tool as a new way to serve more than 80 years of wine expertise built up inside the group, which has been bottling wine since 1937.
An online shop without a shop floor
Boir has no stores. It went live on 6 December 2024 as the successor to Klassewijnen, Colruyt's former wine brand, with a range that, according to the trade magazine Gondola, is not sold in the group's other formats. Orders are delivered to the door or collected at Collect&Go pick-up points. Boir also runs an annual en primeur sale of Bordeaux.
In a May profile, Forbes Belgium reported that Boir focuses on bottles between €10 and €25, gives double loyalty points on alcohol-free products and wants at least one alcohol-free item in every basket within five years. The same article already mentioned an AI assistant for food pairing; Babette is that plan now in public.
Restaurants still compete for prizes such as the World's Best Wine Lists awards; Colruyt is betting on software to shorten the list instead. Whether an AI sommelier sells more bottles than a well-written shelf label is something Colruyt has not yet put a figure on.
