Weird Science and Wine (Part 3)

Back in the olden days, such as perhaps five years ago, the process of determining when to harvest grapes was done much the same as it was hundreds of years ago. Yes, there were some improvement, but they were slow and not dramatic.

The tried and true methods of determining when to harvest were having the vignerons and the winemakers walk through the vineyards, look at grapes, smell grapes, and taste grapes. They checked for things like color, skin thickness, and of course, taste. And, they relied on their memories and the good old weather forecasters. Of course, that last aid, the meteorologists have also gotten much better as their models and use of technology has improved. 

Back in the late 19 century, a German scientist named Ernst Abbe invented the laboratory refractometer. Eventually, it was found that this little device could measure the brix of the wine. Essentially, that is the sugar content of the grapes which determines the alcohol potential of the wine. Some winemakers pick by brix, others by taste, and some by a combination of the two. And, then there are the ones that just pick a date or use their intuition, or simply pick the day(s) on which the winemakers have availability to pick the grapes.

Suppose there was a better way. Suppose that some time in the future, you coudl send drones out in the vineyards to gather data. They might, for example, build soil and drainage maps, measure ripeness of grapes, and essentially using a number of variables build a series of gradients for the entire vineyard. And, then using those models, computers could tell a winemaker based on that winemakers criteria the ideal day and even time of day to pick a particular row of grapes among all the rows in a vineyard. So, for example, in the Wooly Bully Vineyard, Block 8, Rows 14 through 31 should be picked in the very early morning of October 9. 

For some wineries, the future is now. High end wineries are engaging artificial intelligence firms and even NASA to do just that. While I don't know if I or you can taste the difference that such AI produces or even if it does lead to the production of a wine that we will like better, this future of high end wineries is here now. 

I might have some wine that was made this way, although I might not. I don't know. And, I don't know how to determine if I think it produces a better wine. But, the science is pretty cool.