Winemaking is anything but new. Some of the traditions that are more than thousands of years old are still being used today even by the biggest names in winemaking. However, this doesn’t mean that new technologies can’t help and bring some new ideas to the table.
Chateu Clerc Milon, from the famous Bordeaux region of France, is one of the wineries that implement technology and AI to their operations. The vineyard robot, Ted, even though is not capable of doing everything by itself in the winemaking process, does some of the repetitive work such as weeding and soil cultivating, while constantly collecting data.
Napa Valley of California is not lagging behind of the brand new technologies that are being used in France. Palmaz Vineyards uses a software called FILICS, which uses sensors, x-ray and probes to detect problems in order to achieve the most ideal conditions for fermentation and storage.
Another new-world wine firm that uses the wonders of AI to contribute wine-making process is a tech firm from Australia, Alilytich. Alilytich’s significant points are to ensure that there won’t be contamination and managing the inventory.
There are also apps that use AI and big data in the wine world that target the end users. Vivino, an app downloaded by as many as 51 million(which also managed to acquire myself as an active user) helps people all over the world to find the right wine for them. It is more than easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of selection and brands in today’s wine aisles. Vivino tries to tackle this problem by not only asking its users taste preferences such as dryness and acidity but also, it provides the crowdsourced data when the label of the wine is photographed. In an app which is downloaded by 20,000 users every day, the comments and reviews about the wine one considers buying will probably not fall short. Furthermore, its AI can provide the individual users a “match score” for the wine they are checking, which is a simple score of the algorithm’s prediction about whether the user will enjoy the wine.
Even though the wine industry has not been the fastest changing industry for the past 2000 years, I believe the recent developments are changing this thousands of years old industry for good and faster than ever.
