Making better wine and beer with machine learning

Fires during summer 2019–2020 decimated entire vineyards in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, but smoke, which was far more widespread and insidious, seeped into grapes and into fermenting barrels, yielding unpleasant, unsaleable product. Although the full extent of the damage caused has not yet been calculated, analysis from the Australian Wine Research Institute indicates that smoke taint alone costs the country's wine industry tens to hundreds of millions of dollars each time a high fire season occurs. Advances in a wide range of technologies could help growers and winemakers mitigate the negative impact of smoke taint and other unpredictable anomalies, such as frost, drought, pests and disease -- and not just in Australia, but around the world. The Vineyard of the Future, led by Associate Professor Sigfredo Fuentes, a plant physiologist at the University of Melbourne, is an international consortium of scientists conducting leading-edge research to amass high-resolution data from vine to glass and analyse it in meaningful ways. Drones, satellite imaging, video analysis, and plant and people sensors combined with artificial intelligence -- collectively called "digital agriculture" -- give producers and sellers of wine an advantage in an industry riddled with uncertainty.