From Memory to Menu: How a Wine Director Turned Cellar Lore into a Shared System
ADL turned a three-Michelin-star wine program's undocumented knowledge — tasting notes, pairing logic, vintage availability — into a structured system the entire floor team could use, cutting onboarding time by 80% with zero new tools.
Snapshot
Results
1
shared source of truth for entire program
3
systems consolidated into one
80%
reduction in onboarding time
About Rosa Alpina St. Hubertus Restaurant
Rosa Alpina sits in San Cassiano, a village under a thousand people in Italy’s Dolomites. Three generations of the Pizzinini family have run it since 1940. In 2025 it reopened as Aman Rosa Alpina after a full renovation by Jean-Michel Gathy.
St. Hubertus is the main restaurant. Chef Norbert Niederkofler has led it since 1996. Started as a small kitchen inside the hotel pizzeria. First star in 2000, second in 2007, third in 2018, plus a Green Star. “Cook the Mountain” — only local, seasonal ingredients from the Alpine arc. The wine program runs just as deep: hundreds of producers across South Tyrol, Northern Italy, beyond.
The Problem
Three Michelin stars. A wine program spanning hundreds of producers, regions, vintages, cuvées. The knowledge that held it together lived almost entirely in the Wine Director’s head.
Staff couldn’t answer allocation questions without calling him. Tasting notes, pairing logic, vintage availability, producer relationships — notebooks, partial spreadsheets, memory. New sommeliers? Months of shadowing. Nothing written down.
He didn’t need more software. He needed what he’d built over years to finally be something his team could use.
What We Built
A knowledge system that captured the wine program’s depth and put it where the floor team could actually use it. Built inside the tools they already had.
- Ontology design — mapped producers, regions, vintages, cuvées, allocation tiers into a structure that could grow
- Tasting notes, pairing guidance, guest preferences, seasonal availability — one reference the team could consult mid-service
- Wired the structure into the existing POS and tracking sheet. Updates in one place instead of three
- Taxonomy and data relationships built so future automation (reorder suggestions, pairing, guest history) wouldn’t require a rebuild
- No new tools. Everything on top of what they already used. Adoption was immediate.
The Shift
“He learned how I think about wine — regions, producers, pairings — and turned it into something my whole team can use.”
