By Stuart Pigott & Paula Redes Sidore
Part of wine’s allure lies in the story of the small farmer toiling in the vineyards, working the soil, caressing the vines planted by her grandfather or great-grandfather, stomped by blistered feet that lovingly tread the family path. It’s a romantic story. But like the difference between Cinderella as told by Disney and the tale told by the brothers Grimm, the price of that romance is all too often hidden within silver slippers: the difficulty of finding and keeping skilled vineyard teams; and the difficult and irregular terrain they have to work. Technological developments are now pointing to a promising, if highly technical and hotly contested, solution: artificial intelligence. Robotic advancements in imaging, positioning, and learning over the last few years are not only creating sustainable solutions in the vineyard, but also opening the possibility of organic and even biodynamic farming at a larger scale than was previously deemed possible. So although future vineyard work may more closely resemble The Martian Chronicles than “Under the Tuscan Sun”, robots are pushing viticulture in an unexpected, and ecological, direction.
ProWein, the world’s largest wine and spirits trade show, has over the course of its thirty-year history often been among the first to showcase such cutting edge developments. And with some 5,700 exhibitors from round about 60 different countries, the results of these next-gen “helpers” on display at ProWein 2024 is promising to be nothing less than thrilling.
VitiBot: Made in France
We had the honor of witnessing firsthand one of the first of the Bakus robots from Reims startup VitiBot in 2019. On a brutally hot day, we stood in the fields of Champagne grower Aspasie (Hall 9, Champagne Lounge) as owner Paul-Vincent Ariston showed us his newly delivered Bakus. The four-wheeled autonomous straddle robot was unfazed by the heat, moving up and down and between the rows with ease. Bakus was designed by Cédric Bache, engineer and son of a winemaker. The fully electric-powered, universal platform is capable of navigating even narrow vine rows to perform a number of vineyard tasks from weeding to pruning to leaf removal, and able to work on slopes of up to 45 degrees.
Call Me Ted: High-tech sustainability
In 2017, Naïo Technologies made international waves with the Médoc debut of a lightweight (2.1 tonnes), fully autonomous, 100% electric, straddle robot named Ted. Its modular arches allow it to adapt to various vine heights and varieties. One of the first to be dedicated exclusively to vineyard work. Ted’s precise mechanical weeding not only limits the need for, or complete elimination of, herbicides, but also offers a solution to labor-intensive tasks in the vineyard. Using GPS for precise positioning, it can run on its own for the equivalent of a full working day (8 hours) and work up to 5 hectares per day. Part of what sets Ted, and other emerging robots like it, apart from past mechanical solutions is that these tools are as focused on improving sustainability as efficiency. In that bastion of tradition Châteauneuf du Pape, we also bumped into a very similar robot that had astounded the co-owner and director of Chateau Mont-Redon, Pierre Fabre, with its ability to weed the vineyards of this famous estate that are littered with the galets cobblestones for which this appellation is famous. “We were amazed how accurately and reliably it worked,” he told us. If robots can weed in that challenging location, then they can weed in any location! Following successful trials in France, including Cognac producer Hennessy and Château Clerc Milon in Bordeaux, Ted was presented to the American market for the first time in 2022.
Robots emerging from Switzerland to Stellenbosch Ted and Bakus represent only a few of the growing army of advancements released over the last few years from the world’s wine producing regions and institutions. Spain premiered VineScout in 2016, an autonomous robot for vineyard monitoring, mapping and management, capable of collecting over 3,000 data points per hour, including temperature, water availability, and biomass in challenging — and even hostile — terrain. Across the ocean, researchers at Cornell University in America’s Finger Lakes winegrowing region have designed a series of small, patrolling PhytoPatholoBots (PPB) to assist in the development of new disease-resistant grape varieties. The first bots were released into four grape breeding programs across the U.S. in the spring of 2023, the first year of a four-year project. Using computer vision, AI and robotics, these bots will collect real-time data on a leafby- leaf basis to evaluate the health and state of each vine. The Cornell project hopes to use this research to convince growers to widely adopt new disease-resistant varieties and thus ignificantly reduce pesticide use.
Digitized Taste
Moving from the vineyard into the tasting room, daily improvements in translation and texts continue to reduce the shrinking realm of the copywriter and critic, especially when it comes to the tasting note. Yet, while AI can now successfully copy the writing style of a particular critic or writer, and efficiently synthesize typical characteristics, specific vintage conditions, and other published opinions, what it hasn’t been able to do — yet — is smell and taste and rate. Not to say that some aren’t trying to achieve something significant in this field. Last year saw the Prowein debut of PINOT: Project for the Development of Artificial Intelligence in Oenological Technology. In cooperation with the Weincampus DLR Neustadt (Hall 1, A65) and the Frauenhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, the project, launched in 2021, is looking to develop an AI-supported analysis of wine aroma that, according to their literature, “bridges the gap between sensory perception and chemical analysis.” By combining AI algorithms with sensors for volatile organic compounds, they are hoping to be among the first to digitize sensory perception. Despite the binary preference for ones and zeroes and the clarity of code, robots are tools, rather than replacements. Few are advocating for fully-automated vineyards, even organic ones. By harnessing robotic processing speed as a data-delivery system, winemakers hope to free themselves to do what (to date) no robot can: make aesthetic decisions and follow their gut instinct. That’s something we can gladly toast.
Note for Editors:
High-resolution visuals for ProWein and the graphs can be found in our photo database in the “Media & News” section at www.prowein.com
