At this wine store, try before you buy

BROOKLINE -- High technology may have replaced hand harvesters with mechanical pickers, substituted stainless steel tanks for wooden barrels, and turned winemakers into enologists, but until now it hasn't done much to improve or even alter the experience at the crucial point where the wine lover and his beloved beverage actually meet.

Today, however, customers of a Brookline wine shop are getting a taste of a technology that may signal a shift in the entire retail wine-buying experience.

At the Wine Gallery on Route 9 near Brookline Village, general manager Wes Narron refers to his gleaming, 6-foot-high Enomatic wine dispensing units, collectively, as ''the wine jukebox." Stationed toward the back of the store, the three Italian-made carousels put a total of 48 wines at the disposal of customers, dispensing free 1/2-ounce pours at the push of a button. The wine stays fresh because as a sample is dispensed, the machine automatically injects a burst of nitrogen into the bottle. The inert, food-grade gas settles like a blanket over the surface of the remaining wine, keeping oxygen out but remaining otherwise undetectable.

MORE JUKEBOX PHOTOS To see a photo gallery of the wine jukebox, visit www.boston.com/ae/food.

Narron first saw the machines in a self-service Bay Area wine bar and knew right away they could be an invaluable sales tool in a retail environment. Saturday afternoon tasters Jared Baucom and Melissa Lamb seem to agree. Stemware poised, the 20-something pair circles one of the two red wine carousels (the third refrigerated unit holds whites). ''We probably will become customers now," Baucom said, ''because when you get to taste before you buy you're more likely to leave with what you want. It's very cool."

Of course, there's nothing new about retailers providing tastes to customers. Most good wine shops set aside a couple of hours one afternoon or early evening each week to pour samples of a few wines. But if you don't happen to come in at just the right time, you're usually out of luck. The staff isn't likely to start pulling corks just for you. Here, no less than four dozen bottles are open and ready to go anytime.

According to Narron, Massachusetts law allows retailers to provide up to 6 ounces to a customer at a single tasting session. More than that calls for what's called an on-premise license, the kind held by restaurants. The shop has an ingenious system in place for making sure customers don't exceed the limit. To use the carousel, you first visit the main desk, verify your age, and request a card that resembles and works like a bank debit card. To start tasting, insert the card in one of the two ports on a machine, choose the wine you want to sample, and push a button. The machine automatically debits your card with every pour. You start with 12 credits and spend them at the rate of one credit for each $10 of the bottle's retail price. So, one taste of a wine costing up to $10 uses up one credit, while a sample from a bottle priced at between $50 and $60 would consume six credits in one fell sip.

The big investment in these sophisticated dispensers ($20,000-$25,0000 per unit) makes other kinds of customer-friendly services possible. For example, every wine in the jukebox is numbered, so if you're not sure how to pronounce Feudi Falanghina Sannio, you have only to look for the bin marked with a big ''22," for example, to find your wine. A small mercy, maybe, but for many a welcome one.

The carousels, which have been in place for about five months and have not been installed at the store's other location in Kenmore Square, are the center of attraction in a place that seems bent on redefining what a wine shop can be. There's a spacious, airy feel here and plenty of room to move around. But the key difference may well be that the opportunity to taste so many wines adjusts the relationship between buyer and seller, putting customers and staff on more of an equal footing.

Instead of having to depend entirely on the few words retailers can squeeze onto the little cards they call ''shelf-talkers" or on a Wine Spectator rating, consumers can more readily make up their own minds about what they like and don't. As buyers become responsible for their own purchases, they build confidence and make better decisions -- which makes everyone happy. ''Our goal is to show people they can learn to trust their own palates," says Narron.

So now that we have the wine jukebox, can the wine iPod be far behind?

Wine Gallery Brookline, 375 Boylston St., Brookline, 617-277-5522.

Stephen Meuse can be reached at onwine@comcast.net.