A Magic Wand to Take the Guesswork Out of Winemaking

(Bloomberg) -- The man wandering through the vineyard looks lost. He’s brandishing a handheld sensor that resembles a self-checkout scanner in the supermarket or perhaps a flashlight. He pauses as he walks down the rows of vines, holding the device carefully against bunches of grapes. There’s no flash or beep as he does so; inside the grapes, though, beams of shortwave light from the gadget agitate molecules of anthocyanin. The combination of wavelengths is tailor-made to resonate with these color compounds, which indicate a grape’s ripeness.

The pigments fluoresce under the beam of the gadget, allowing it to log their presence, like a teacher asking pupils to raise their hand. It’s a process that’s repeated weekly, starting as the fruit begins to turn in July, with the readings banked to a central server. There, artificial intelligence compares them with historic and theoretical data: Is a given bunch riper now—higher levels of anthocyanins—or is it past peak, with lower levels? How do its current readings compare with parallel data taken the previous week?

This science, which helps determine the best moment to harvest each vine, is already discreetly in use at some of the world’s finest vineyards, including Hamel in Sonoma and Napa Valley’s Ovid.

“Without that information, you are very much prone to doing the same thing, year in and year out, because you know that works for sure,” says Austin Peterson, winemaker at Ovid. “But you might only be achieving 70% of what you can potentially do.”

Much-lauded roving winemaker Aaron Pott is also a fan.

Wineries that sign up for Fruition Sciences’ 360viti process, which starts at $10,000 for a year, won’t rely on just this wand, though. The mad-scientist-like viticulture program features other futuristic elements aimed at finessing winemaking, each customized to the user’s location. They might include installing static sensors in key locations or measuring wind speed, light, or atmospheric changes. A winemaker can carry a laser scanner up and down each row in winter, once the leaves have fallen, to measure the size and strength of shoots—cross-referencing the data with past atmospheric readings to see the long-term impact of weather changes on growth. The 360viti might also use readings from sleeves wrapped around selected vines to measure sap flow.

Co-founder Thibaut Scholasch says Fruition Sciences looks at a broad range of KPIs, or key performance indicators. “We’re establishing a real-time health report,” he says, “essentially trying to consider the [entire] vineyard as if it were a living organism, like a human being.”

Scholasch, who’s from northern France, began his career as a winemaker in Chile and Tasmania, Australia, before developing the research program at Robert Mondavi Winery in Northern California. That’s when his interest in this data-based approach began. Once Scholasch had earned a doctorate in viticulture, he began developing what’s now 360viti with his co-founder, Sébastien Payen. That was 11 years ago. Since then the company has used cutting-edge technology to achieve twin goals: better wine and lower costs, whether environmental or economic.

To improve a particular vintage, a grower can stratify harvesting, so only the vines currently producing grand cru-worthy grapes are picked and crushed together. Reducing costs is often related to water, a precious resource and major expense in drought-prone California.

Scholasch’s work has helped dispel traditional myths about when to water a vine: It’s wrongheaded to simply assume a wilting, droopy plant is thirsty. In fact, as his data have shown, watering in response to such behavior can backfire.

“It builds dependency on irrigation and creates junkie-like habits in the plant, always in need of a fix. The plant could just be adjusting to the lack of moisture in the air.”

No wonder that Fruition Sciences claims it can reduce water usage per acre by two Olympic-size swimming pools per year; one Napa-based vineyard went from watering every three days to only once every three weeks after signing up for the service. Scholasch and his team have recently concluded a three-year collaboration with the nonprofit Energy Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., examining how reduced water use can translate into energy savings—and how its vineyard data could be used on other green spaces.

Scholasch is looking to expand 360viti’s reach in another way: How and how well a plant stores carbohydrates can predict its short-term productivity and long-term vigor. Skinnier shoots correlate closely with higher-quality fruit for wine. He describes his mission with the zeal of a healthy-eating advocate. “We’re doing this for the sake of plant health, longevity, fruit production, and wine quality.”