The Five Axes of Pairing Design — Translating the Sommelier's Sensibility into the Non-Alcoholic

The craft of pairing does not change when the range of drinks widens

The role of the "sommelier", as defined by the Association de la Sommellerie Internationale (ASI), has in recent years shifted quietly — from a specialist in wine toward "a specialist who elevates the guest's experience through beverages of every kind". In the educational framework of the Court of Master Sommeliers, too, knowledge of sake, shōchū, non-alcoholic drinks, coffee, and tea is being woven in systematically. This signals that the horizon of the sommelier's profession is expanding beyond wine.

We do not read this change as "the end of the age of wine". Rather, we believe we have entered an age in which a sensibility honed on wine is expressed across a wider palette. For however far the range of drinks widens, the essence of pairing — to frame a guest's evening with a single glass — surely does not change.

This entry is the "note on pairing-design language" we consult when we sit in dialogue with our co-creation partners: sommeliers, chefs, and F&B managers.

Why we place the "five axes" at the center

In the ASI pairing manual, five dimensions are standardly named as the central axes for evaluating a marriage of dish and drink: acidity, sweetness, bitterness, umami, and aroma. These are often expanded to seven with the addition of temperature and texture, but here we begin by organizing our thinking around the five core axes.

That these five are "placed at the center" has, we believe, structural reasons. First, the five axes function as a common language answering to both the dish and the drink. The acidity of a dish and the acidity of a drink; the umami of a dish and the umami compounds of a drink. Speaking of both in the same vocabulary turns the discussion of a pairing into a back-and-forth between abstraction and specificity.

Second, the five axes are vocabulary derived from wine, yet independent of any particular raw material. Words like the "tannin" or "body" of wine are hard to use without presupposing the grape. Acidity, sweetness, bitterness, umami, and aroma, by contrast, apply just as readily to tea, herbs, fruit, vegetables, and spices. That is what makes them so translatable into the non-alcoholic.

Third, the five axes also become a language of rhythm for designing the arc of an entire course — its introduction, development, turn, and conclusion. Raise the acidity for the appetizer; resonate umami with umami through the fish course; use bitterness to cut the fat of the meat course; close with sweetness and aroma at dessert. Not merely optimizing each plate, but designing the gradient of the whole course — as an instrument for that, the five axes are eminently practical.

The non-alcoholic extends the "bitterness, umami, and aroma" of the five axes

Of the five axes, the three where the "breadth of usable materials" differs most sharply between wine and non-alcoholic drinks are, in our observation, bitterness, umami, and aroma.

In wine, diversity is created through combinations of grape variety, region, and vinification method. This is a mature system refined over a long history, and it lies at the foundation of the modern sommelier's sensibility. The non-alcoholic drink, meanwhile, can be chosen from an even wider palette of plant materials. Tea, herbs, fruit, vegetables, spices, mushrooms, seaweed — each carries its own aromatic, bitter, and umami compounds.

Take umami. The theanine of tea (a kind of amino acid) resonates chemically with the umami compounds of a dish (glutamate, inosinate). It is a material that can converse with the dish along a path distinct from the umami of wine. Take bitterness. The volatile compounds of Japanese herbs, or the catechins of tea brewed at a higher temperature, carry the function of cutting the fat of a dish. Take aroma. The combination of Japanese herbs, domestic citrus, spices, and pesticide-free fruit opens an aromatic horizon entirely apart from the barrel notes and grape notes of wine.

In other words, we hold the hypothesis that non-alcoholic pairing does not shrink the vocabulary of wine pairing but extends it. For a sommelier to study the non-alcoholic is not to forget wine. It is to express, across a wider palette, the sensibility that wine has honed.

How we use the five axes across the three businesses

Within Sun&R.Lab's three businesses, the five axes are put to work in distinct ways.

In the Maison Brand business, the five axes function as a guide for product design. The four lines of NEIGE & THÉ (Tea / Herbal / Fruits & Veg / Infusion) are composed with an awareness of which part of the five axes each is to carry. The Tea Line carries umami and a faint bitterness; the Herbal Line, aroma; the Fruits & Veg Line, acidity and sweetness; the Infusion Line, a layered balance — this is how we organize each line's role in the vocabulary of the five axes.

In the Non-Alcohol Agency business, the five axes function as a language of dialogue with the venue. In the course of Discovery, as we advance conversations with several food-and-beverage operators, we place the five axes as a shared reference point so that the discussion of pairing design does not tip too far into "subjective preference". Honoring the sensibility of cook and sommelier, while rendering it into language and making it reproducible — this is one of the areas where the Agency business hopes to be of use through accompaniment.

In the BizDev business, we do not use the five axes as such. But if we take the five axes as "a methodology for putting the field's sensibility into language", the thinking can be applied to other industries. Translating the operational instinct of the power industry into a set of organizable indicators like the five axes. Distilling the field knowledge of logistics into a reproducible design language. These are expressions of the "putting field sensibility into language" methodology that Sun&R.Lab carries through all three businesses.

The five axes are also an instrument for the discussion of price and value

Finally, the five axes serve as an instrument not only for technical discourse but for the discourse of management.

In the field of luxury hospitality, a discussion is gradually being observed: "at what percentage of the alcohol course should the non-alcohol course be priced?" There is no uniform correct answer, but if, as a starting point for the discussion, one organizes "which of the five axes this course resonates and which it contrasts", the rationale for pricing becomes easier to put into language. The rarity of a material, the precision of an extraction technique, the value of a story, the stable quality of service in the field — these can be translated into the question of which of the five axes each investment is meant to support.

We would rather treat price not as "a negotiation over numbers" but as "the work of putting the structure of value into a shared language". The five axes are an auxiliary line for that work.

A design language is something to be grown together with the industry

The design language of non-alcoholic pairing is, as an industry as a whole, still unfinished. The shared vocabulary that wine has — "body", "tannin", "minerality" — remains scarce for the non-alcoholic. For that very reason, we take the work of building that vocabulary now to carry great significance.

Sun&R.Lab hopes to grow this design language together, weaving long-term dialogue with sommeliers, chefs, and F&B managers. Not proposing in one direction, but translating and structuring the sensibility of the field, and returning it once more to the field — within that back-and-forth, we believe, the North Star of non-alcoholic pairing will gradually take on its contours.

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In the next entry, we write from the perspective of recipe design — how pairing design is implemented in the field of product development.