Wine making gets AI-driven digital shake up

The traditionally highly manual process of wine production is getting a digital makeover in the form of innovative AI and IoT-driven technology.

 

Winely is the New Zealand-based developer of an AI-powered data intelligence platform for monitoring the development of wine fermentation. Breakthroughs in its cloud-based technology, which uses IoT data from in-tank sensors, mean that winemakers can now autonomously monitor and manage the fermentation status of their batches. The new technology is to be pioneered by a selection of pilot customers in California’s wine sector.

 

“We couldn’t be more excited to debut the next iteration of our product,” said Abbe Hyde, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Winely. “The new enhancements allow for a ‘set & forget’ experience, meaning our customers can easily self-install when transferring Winely’s device from tank to tank. Once positioned in the tank, they won’t ever have to think about the sensor again, as it can withstand even the most rigorous red wine ferment and high-pressure conditions. These create extremely difficult environments for technology to survive in, due to the intense pressures of reds, which is a problem that the industry has been trying to solve for the better part of two decades now.”

 

Previously, the only way to gain insight into fermentation was to put very expensive and hard-to-come-by precision sensors into a tank, generally limited to one sensor per attribute. Winely’s new technology is able to capture millions of data points holistically at a low cost, while applying machine learning to that data to enable predictive vision on each ferment, enabling winemakers to get ahead of the game on each tank.

 

“Our approach to this enhancement has been unique,” Hyde added. “The default approach by others has been to ‘just try a new sensor.’ Instead, our approach is to upgrade our algorithms. This means we can continue to iterate our product and improve its accuracy, even in the middle of a vintage, whilst the device is still in the tank — thereby enabling continuous upgrades through Cloud-based machine learning updates, rather than throwing away the hardware and starting discovery from scratch.”

 

 

 

 

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Book of the Month*

The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck

By Dr Christian Busch
Serendipity is an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. To other people it looks like “good luck”, but it is more the ability to recognise and seize an opportunity, rather than have good fortune thrust upon one. Finding a wallet stuffed with money on the conference room floor is good luck, whereas holding it up and asking if anyone has lost their wallet might be the beginning of a valuable friendship – that would be serendipity.

Chance encounters, or strokes of fortune, feature in countless stories of business success. This book looks beneath the surface, reveals and teaches the mindset that can transform pure chance into opportunity. The author is director of the Global Economy Program at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, and a lecturer at the London School of Economics.

Serendipity is an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. To other people it looks like “good luck”, but it is more the ability to recognise and seize an opportunity, rather than have good fortune thrust upon one. Finding a wallet stuffed with money on the conference room floor is good luck, whereas holding it up and asking if anyone has lost their wallet might be the beginning of a valuable friendship – that would be serendipity.

The author says “This is a book about the interactions of coincidence, human ambition and imagination”. In the above example: finding the wallet is the coincidence; ambition is the desire to make something of the discovery; add imagination and you open up a whole menu of possibilities: from spending spree to earning a reputation for honesty – or even making a wealthy friend.

Business is typically forged on human ambition and imagination, but early success often feeds an appetite for control – and “control freaks” can be blind to the opportunities thrown up by the unexpected. They only see chance events as distractions. If plans go awry, they may blame the failure on “bad luck” rather than admit their own inflexible attitude.

The author himself admits to being “a German who is used to planning” and prone to feel anxious when something unexpected happens. That makes him an ideal teacher, because he has worked hard to discover and analyse the mindset that enables one to “connect the dots” and cultivate serendipity. He presents a goldmine of examples from science, business and life where an apparent mishap or failure lead to a breakthrough.

Indeed, studies suggest that around 50% of major scientific breakthroughs emerge as the result of accidents or coincidences. A well-known example is Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, launching the whole field of antibiotics. Other examples include X-rays, nylon, microwave ovens, rubber, Velcro, Viagra and Post-it Notes – where would we be without these!

The book goes beyond the ability to recognise and respond to opportunities in chaos, but the subtitle – The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck – is actually a bit misleading. True, he does show ways to develop better fortune, but it would be better to call it “inviting” or “encouraging” good luck. For example, he suggests better ways to start a conversation with a stranger – ways that will make it more likely to lead to chance connections or shared interests.

The publishers may have chosen the word “creating” to make the book appeal to the human desire to control – for control freaks are exactly the readership that would benefit the most from this book’s wisdom and practical advice.

For the rest of us, it offers a great way to rediscover the sense of play that is so important in life – and too often lost in business.

 

“Following the success of The Serendipity Mindset hardback, a paperback edition has also now been launched under the title “Connect the Dots”.

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