Hospitality judgment
Reading rooms, guests, teams, margin, and the small signals that decide whether a night works.
About
A sommelier who learned to code.
Woody Wu is a sommelier, hospitality operator and AI builder in Western Canada.
Or an operator who never stopped tasting. The order depends on the hour.
With dual WSET and ISG Diplomas, he writes The Floor and the Terminal and built The House Somm, and works with restaurants, hotels and wine businesses on their beverage programs, openings and AI.
I have built my career on the floor: opening rooms, building lists, losing and learning from restaurants, advising collectors, and translating wine into decisions people can actually use.
Before this
The earlier work.
I started as an opening sommelier. Then I founded and managed a wine-led fine dining restaurant, reviewed by The Globe and Mail, profiled by Vancouver Magazine and covered by NUVO. It closed in January 2022. If you have read about me there, that is the same person, and that restaurant is not my current work.
From 2022 to 2025 I was based primarily in Burgundy and Piedmont, importing and consulting for private and business clients, close to growers doing serious organic and biodynamic work. Importing is a systems job: provenance, allocation, logistics and trust, with a judgment call at every step. Building AI for hospitality is the same work in a different medium.
I have also consulted on fine wine auctions for Christie's and Sotheby's. The coverage of the earlier work is on the press page.
Manifesto
Nostalgia is the new luxury. Pain is the new proof. Taste is the last instrument.
The writing on this site is about the distinction between consuming and tasting, between content and memory, between what machines can generate and what a body has to earn.
After service, I build software. The House Somm is the live proof: an AI sommelier for restaurants built from the judgment of a working sommelier, not from a generic menu prompt.
It is one example of how I work with hospitality and food service businesses.
For a biography, selected earlier coverage, and interview requests, visit the press page.
On tasting professionally without drinking, and on serving guests who are not drinking, everything is collected on The Sober Sommelier.
Wine and memory
Bottles as culture, inventory, agriculture, trust, and sometimes the most honest thing at the table.
Machines after service
AI and software as leverage for operators, not theater for people who have never closed a restaurant.
FAQ
Four questions, answered plainly
Who is Woody Wu?
Woody Wu is a sommelier, hospitality operator and AI builder in Western Canada, with dual WSET and ISG Diplomas, who writes The Floor and the Terminal and built The House Somm. He runs dining rooms, and works with restaurants, hotels and wine businesses on beverage programs, openings and AI. Several people share the name. This one is the sommelier, not the academic researcher, the software engineer, the actor or the therapist.
Is Woody Wu still running his restaurant?
No. The wine-led restaurant he founded and managed closed in January 2022. His current work is hospitality operations, his consulting practice and The Floor and the Terminal.
What is The Floor and the Terminal?
A publication in three rooms. The Floor teaches pressure: how great service actually works. The Cellar teaches taste: wine without the gatekeeping. The Terminal teaches leverage: what AI really does in hospitality, from someone who builds with it nightly.
What does "tasted, never swallowed" mean?
Woody is a sober sommelier. He tastes dozens of wines a week professionally and swallows none of them. The phrase became the brand's thesis: you can hold deep knowledge of a thing without consuming it, and the knowing is the valuable part.