Featured User: Shengli Hu

Shengli Hu has been an AI research scientist with Dataminr Inc in New York City since she received her PhD in wine tasting from Cornell University in Ithaca, in the beautiful finger lakes region in upstate New York. Her research experience and interests are interdisciplinary, bridging social sciences, computational linguistics, computer vision, and speech. She has published in top conferences and journals in natural language processing, computer vision, speech, and applied statistics including Association of Computational Linguistics (ACL), Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), InterSpeech, and Annals of Applied Statistics (AoAS). She is also a wine professional with credentials including Certified Sommelier by The Court of Master Sommelier, Diploma in Wine by Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET), Certified Specialist of Wine by The Society of Wine Educators, and Certified Specialist of Spirits by The Society of Wine Educators. She is currently finishing her new book about AI for wine professionals which examines the essential qualities of sommeliers through the lens of AI, identifies components of the wine industry where AI greatly improves upon human sommeliers, solves challenging problems that have shaken the sommelier circles in recent years, and lays out future plans to build an ultimate sommelier-in-the-loop AI system for the wine industry. Delectable: What sparked your passion for wine? Shengli Hu: Coming from a traditional Chinese family, I had never tasted any alcoholic beverage until my first wine tasting class at college, and the years studying away in Ithaca in the middle of nowhere made me realize what I had been missing out on all along. Blind tasting quickly became my favorite game of all time. Or the fact that the wine world is an ever-expanding web that spawns history, language, geology, culture, and more… D: What wine region are you wild about right now? SH: Over time my palate evolved quite a bit but aged Alsacian Riesling , Riesling or Gruner Veltliner Smaragd from Wachau , and aged Savennieres have always been among the favorites. Currently I have been excited about the potential of Armenian wines and wine regions like Vayot Dzor and Ararat , where ancient vine growing and winemaking traditions are being revived. D: What is the most unusual wine you’ve ever tried? SH: I was at a GuildSomm dessert wine tasting led by the former Delectable editor Bryce Wiatrak who scored us the 1948 Fondillon Solera from Alicante and the Angelica from Swanson Winery in Amador California. D: What is your golden rule for wine? SH: Not unlike many other things in life, wine study is a humbling experience through which you never stop learning... D: Say you’re not allowed to have wine, what is your second option? SH: Freshly brewed fruity coffee from home-roasted coffee beans and brewed Japanese tea. D: Choose a movie, book, quote, or song and pair it with a wine SH: As a theater fan: Hadestown with a Gruner Veltliner Smaragd from Wachau : starts bright and peppery with the acidity racing up and down like a roller coaster over time, only to strike a resounding finish of a phenolic bite. D: If you were a wine, what wine would you be? SH: Muscadet or Aligoté perhaps: searing and rasping acidity, non-aromatic, and bitter sometimes with a phenolic grip. D: What is your favorite bottle you’ve opened recently? SH: 2008 Felsina Vin Santo Chianti Classico : deep amber with an orange hint, it was nutty, spicy, yeasty, slightly chocolaty, and figgy. Through its long lingering finish, its sweetness is well balanced by the racy acidity and fruit nature. Not unlike Vin Jaune, old white Rioja, or a fine Madeira, sweet or dry.