Drink: Traveling oenophile? Good news: Your next hotel room might offer wine on tap.
The situation: You key in to your hotel room after a stressful business meeting. All you want is an immediate glass of wine to drink while watching the evening news.
The problem: You don’t want to open the full bottle of ludicrously overpriced plonk in the minibar. Room service will take 45 minutes to bring you a Saran-wrapped glass filled with Champagne that’s too warm.
A growing number of hotels have found a solution to this widespread dilemma: the Plum machine. About the size of a large espresso machine, the latest in-room luxury preserves two opened bottles of wine for weeks at the perfect serving temperature and allows you to draw off a glass with one touch.
When it debuted as the new “essential” home wine appliance last fall at $1,499, I admit I was unmoved. Owning one made sense only if you take days to finish off a bottle of vino or hate to open bottles yourself. But for hotels and their guests, the Plum is a godsend (even if you have to pay for each glass you drink). And a touchscreen provides information on the wine, tasting notes and even a virtual tour of the winery, if you want. Take that, Alexa!
The first hotel to capitalize on the Plum’s in-room potential was the Four Seasons in Silicon Valley, where the pace is fast and the clientele savors the latest high-tech amenities. General manager Florian Riedel says its suites feature the Plum, and all rooms will have them by the end of 2018. The sleek, brushed-stainless cube sits nicely on a sideboard, taking up very little space for the pleasure it brings.
The mastermind behind the Plum, tech entrepreneur David Koretz, admits he started working with hotels two years before the device officially launched. He enlisted engineers from Google, Amazon’s Lab 126 and Motorola to develop the technology. It uses double-cored needles to pierce the bottles’ corks, then injects argon gas to preserve the wine.
So far, nearly a dozen U.S. hotels are on board, including Miami Beach’s La Confidante, the Hyatt Unbound Collection and the Rosewood Sand Hill in Menlo Park, which rolled out its Plum program in February. San Francisco’s the Clift will come on board this spring.
For oenophiles, a key question is what wines the machines contain. Do they beat out the usual minibar fare?
Well, pretty much. At La Confidante, the Plum in every room dispenses Evesham Wood pinot noir from Oregon ($5.25 for a 2-ounce
glass; 5 ounces for $16) and Justin sauvignon blanc ($4, $12) from Paso Robles. The Four Seasons Silicon Valley wines are a step up in quality and price. Both are Napa stars: bright, elegant Newton Unfiltered chardonnay ($40 retail) and vibrant, distinctive
Chappellet cabernet sauvignon ($60 retail), with per-glass Plum prices ranging from $14 to $18.
Rosewood Sand Hill offers two equally compelling Napa wines: the creamy, lush 2016 Far Niente chardonnay ($55 retail) and the plummy, savory 2013 Groth cabernet sauvignon ($52 retail). Choices will typically change every three months or so.
The Plum automatically keeps track of how many glasses you drink, adds the cost to your hotel bill, and notifies management when it’s time to replace the bottles. It also fits neatly into the current tech-savvy hotel room trend.
“Technology,” Koretz says, “is forcing hoteliers to rethink what service means in an era where they may never interact with the guest in person.”
So far the Plum’s biggest problem is awareness. As guests checked out at the Four Seasons, some were asked why they hadn’t tried a glass of wine from the machine. They replied that they had thought it was an air purifier.