Artificial intelligence systems are here to stay and all industries are fighting to stay one step ahead: wine is no exception. In this article that we reproduce from The Drink Business, the specialized journalist Lauren Eads records opinions from several experts and synthesizes 5 ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) is already collaborating for the better development and success of the wine industry.
All industries are trying to determine the benefits and drawbacks of using artificial intelligence (AI). In the case of wine, its potential application is enormous. From vineyard management to wine making and marketing, the impact of AI can be felt at all levels of the wine trade, influencing the way wine is grown, made, bought, sold and consumed. . While some are skeptical about its use, many welcome this development and use it as a tool to help work smarter, not harder.
“People across industries should embrace AI to help shape and evolve it in a way that meets human needs and values.”cree Pam Dillon, co-founder of Preferabli, an AI-powered wine recommendation app.
“I think this is especially true of the wine industry.” -adds Dillon-; Our industry is older than many others and has a legacy of storytelling that we want to preserve. The change that comes from advances in artificial intelligence is inevitable and has great potential for positive results. The conversation in our industry should focus on generating results that make our lives easier and better.”
AI can also be applied in wineries to make more efficient decisions, says the winemaker Matt Crafton, from the winery Montelena from Napa, California, USA: “AI is a tool; and the tools that interest me are those that allow me to make better decisions, faster. The benefit is that, in theory, AI can be applied virtually anywhere; The challenge is that AI is only as good as its training models. And most of them are still in their early stages.”.
With this in mind, here are 5 areas of the wine industry in which AI is having a more significant impact and some projects that further promote its use.
1. Viticulture and wine making
Managing a vineyard traditionally involves manual control of the soil, climate, irrigation and pest control. Now, AI can take over much of this work. The family-owned Chateau Montelena in Napa Barrettis just one of the wineries that uses AI in the vineyard. They monitor their vines in real time using AI to measure water use and provide data on vine health and water needs, driving irrigation decisions that improve vine quality, conserve water and save energy. They also use AI and aerial imagery to monitor variations in ripening and stress in different vineyard blocks, allowing for targeted interventions.
“My hope is that the implementation of AI in the near term will increase many of the simple and repeatable tasks that make up winemaking –adds winemaker Crafton; After that, who knows? For the data-driven, consumer-driven wines that populate our supermarket shelves, AI could easily take on a larger role in the characteristics and composition of the final blend. In my world, where creativity cannot be quantified, I will settle for more precise and actionable data.”.
AI is also tackling the smoke problem. At the beginning of this year, Tastryan artificially intelligent robot that can “taste” wines, used its technology to address the smoke problem in California. Tastry is able to identify changes in chemistry between grape varieties that could indicate the presence of smoke, so that wine producers can make decisions more quickly about the sale and marketing of a wine that could be affected and its possible evolution.
Your technology CompuBlend It also helps recover affected grapes by masking smoke, identifying optimal blends and fining agents to help reduce the financial impact of smoke.
2. Oenological education
AI has enormous potential for use in education in general. Why not in wine education? It’s now easy to ask language-based AI models questions about any topic and receive an accurate answer, including wine. But as technology develops, its answers will, in theory, become more reliable and detailed.
“I think it is important that we adopt AI in wine education, a) because the horse has already bolted and I think there is no turning back at this point, so we may as well adopt it, and b) because it can really be beneficial,” says the Master of Wine Anne McHale. AI, in particular long language models (LLM)offer a unique opportunity to streamline and personalize oenology education, particularly for theory exams.
As journalist Lauren Eads described in a recent article for GuildSommLLMs can help students by summarizing complex information, creating study aids such as flashcards, and improving written communication skills, all of which help reduce cognitive load and improve learning efficiency.
This allows students more time to focus on higher level skills, such as analysis and critical thinking, which are crucial for higher level qualifications such as the WSET Diploma.
Its use carries a warning. In fact, an overreliance on AI could reduce students’ ability to think analytically, leading them to become “passive students”McHale adds: “It is important to balance the use of AI with human judgment to ensure that students remain actively engaged in their education. Ethically, we must also be cautious about issues such as copyright and data privacy. While AI can significantly improve wine education, it should be used wisely to avoid negative consequences”.
3. Fraud prevention
In 2023, a breakthrough in preventing wine fraud came thanks to researchers from Bordeaux who unveiled a new artificial intelligence tool that uses gas chromatography to separate and detect the specific chemical components of a wine. Researchers were able to analyze 80 wines harvested over 12 years at 7 different Bordeaux estates, and artificial intelligence was able to recognize specific châteaux based on compound groups and tracing their origins. The teacher Alexandre Pouget, of the University of Geneva in Swiss said he was able to map each «specific chemical signature of each château, regardless of the vintage». In theory, the technology could be used to detect fraudulent wines.
Similarly, in 2022, the New Zealand company Orient presented his method to confirm the authenticity of a wine, through the development of a “forensic fingerprint” based on the chemical composition of a specific terroir, capable of demonstrating the exact location of a wine’s origins.
Oritain’s method works by recording a unique chemical fingerprint of a terroir, which cannot be recreated and which can be compared to the chemical composition of a wine. Reliability comes from the fact that soil chemistry changes very little over hundreds of years.
In both methods the verification measures are applied to the liquid inside the bottle, rather than the wine container.
4. Wine making, marketing and branding
While AI can allow winemaking to be done in a more data-driven way, it can also influence which wines should be sold where. AI is influencing wine marketing by predicting consumer trends. Machine learning models can analyze data from social media, consumer reviews and sales to forecast future wine preferences and market trends. Wineries can use this knowledge to develop products that respond to changing consumer demands. Some are already experimenting with its use in the winery.
In 2023, Aubert & Mathieu, a wine producer Languedoc, France “made” a wine following ChatGPT instructionsafter asking what he thought would be the best wine to make in the south of France. Their advice was to make an organic blend of Syrah and Grenache and package it in a Burgundy-shaped bottle. It offered basic winemaking tips, which were fine-tuned by a winemaker, but the basic premise (the grapes, the label, the marketing) was given by ChatGPT. The result was a wine called «The End».
AI is also used to produce wine labels. In August, the productor de Bergerac, Maison Wessman, threw a limited edition of wine in which each label is unique, generated by AI. With AI-enhanced graphics, Maison Wessman’s new Imprévu (the French word for “unexpected”) will have label designs that “clearly belong to the same family, but are all unique.”
5. Wine recommendations
Although wine recommendation apps have been around for a long time, they have typically operated using crowdsourced data, recommending the most popular wines based on previous purchases. AI has allowed this to go one step further. Preferabli is based on a database of more than 1 million wines and their specific aroma and flavor characteristics, compiled by experts including Masters of Wine and Master sommeliers. It lets you enter any wine (beer or spirit) and receive an unbiased selection of others it thinks you’ll personally like, within its ever-growing database. Its code learns the user’s preferences to create an individual 1:1 profile, which is exclusive to Preferabli and protected by 11 patents.
“Think about the thousands of wines in inventory at any given time, for example in a retail or hospitality establishment.”explains the co-founder of Preferable, Pam Dillon. “How can one person keep them in mind and at the same time keep each customer’s individual taste preferences in mind? Nobody wants to even try to do that. “Preferabli brought together doctors in physiology and applied mathematics with the largest group of Masters of Wine and Master Sommeliers in the world to develop our software, so that it works like a human expert, on a large scale”. Some brands are using AI-powered virtual sommeliers to guide users through the purchasing process.
This summer, Moët Hennessy Wine Estates (MHWE) launched Divineand interactive sommelier with artificial intelligence, able to talk to buyers through wine recommendations. Divine is powered by GPT4 technology, but was trained on a unique data set: with experience across all MHWE wineries, including Cloudy Bay in New Zealand, Ao Yun in China, Bodega Numanthia in Spain, Joseph Phelps in the US, Terraces of the Andes in Mendoza, Argentina y Chateau d’Esclans, Chateau Galoupet and Minuty in France.
It currently takes the form of a “living painting”, which interacts through speech in real life. However, MHWE plans to develop Divine technology into other in-store and online applications, influencing consumers’ in-store purchasing decisions.
Fuente: The Drink Business (25/10)
