When you've decided to order a bottle of Bordeaux, but are trying to choose between a Lynch-Bages from 1998 and one from 2000, you could have an elaborate tete-a-tete with the Sommelier. Or, in the case of the wine bar at Adour, Alain Ducasse's new restaurant in the St. Regis Hotel, you can read about the differences on an interactive menu projected onto the surface of the bar itself. It's like having a discreet private expert on hand at all times, which helps when you're coming to terms with a wine cellar stocked with 12,000 bottles.

The four-seat bar offers exquisite small dishes -- glazed pork belly, seasonal vegetables, even osetra caviar -- which are carefully conceived to be matched with the wine. On a recent visit, the knowledgeable barman recommended to me a bargain white from Greece of all places -- a crisp Domaine Sigalas 2006 -- to go with a cucumber-marinated hamachi. Should you wish to wade into the deep end of four-figure bottles, Adour can happily accommodate you.

The interactive menu takes a moment to get used to (apparently women are faster adapters than men), but once you've settled in you can scroll through the wine list, which describes qualities of each wine -- from the provenance to tasting notes to geographical facts ("lying on a large hillside of deep gravel in the Plateau de Bages") and other details ("the estate has remained practically unchanged since the 16th century"). After a glass or two you feel like quite the expert.

The system is also available in the private dining room, so your guests can know the details of the winning bottles you've chosen. Does this all this render the sommelier obsolete? Not quite. Adour's wine director, Thomas Combescot, told me, "The more people learn, the more they want to know. And that's why we're here." --DAVID COGGINS

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