From cultivation to production, distribution, and marketing, data strategies and the incorporation of technology are revolutionizing the wine industry across the entire value chain.
The adoption of digitalization in the wine sector is still at a low level of maturity but has a high growth potential. The industry is beginning to understand how digital transformation disrupts the business throughout the entire chain: it improves efficiency, productivity, sustainability, and provides more transparency to consumers, creating
disruptive value propositions and new business models.
One major challenge in this regard is adopting digital transformation in small and medium-sized wine production companies, considering two factors: on the one hand, Spain is the third-largest producer in the world after Italy and France, with an average production of 41 million hectoliters in recent years, according to data from the Spanish
Wine Market Observatory (OeMv). On the other hand, it is important to note that the Digital Spain 2025 plan is key to reducing the digital divide among small and medium- sized enterprises. Currently, less than 15% of Spanish companies use Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, but the Digital Spain 2025 Agenda aims to double this percentage in five years.
Digitalization brings significant benefits across the different stages of the wine value chain. These include, for example, better data collection at the source (acidity, quality, weight, etc.) to improve vineyard productivity and performance, product traceability,
more efficient data use to increase productivity, and improvements that lead to the introduction of new distribution and marketing methods.
Artificial intelligence allows for the automation and precision of tasks currently performed by humans, such as better crop management and quality control processes in the winery. Additionally, data exploitation using these technologies contributes to reducing supply costs by enabling the implementation of smart storage systems.
Going a bit further, large wine companies that exploit data extracted from satellite images and GPS in the vineyard already exist. By using drones and satellites, wineries can easily collect data on ripeness, water scarcity, and disease pressure in the vineyard, allowing them to act more quickly to preserve quality.
Different types of remote sensing technology also allow for mapping the structure of a vineyard. This enables wineries to create 3D maps of vineyards, which help with on-site robot technology and reduce accidents. Robots use all this information for fertilization,
harvesting, inventory control, and movement within the winery.
It is interesting to see how— for example—the Internet of Things is revolutionizing the industry. Technological sensors placed in the vineyard, winery, and distribution chain collect data that can be useful information for both the company and consumers, creating added value.
In these scenarios, consumers can use their smartphones to access QR codes with relevant information on the bottles. A combination of blockchain with these codes allows a bottle to “become smart” and track temperature, humidity, location, to whom it was sold, and the current price. Both the producer and the end user could obtain
accurate information regarding the traceability of the wine, about the vineyard it came from, how it was cultivated and produced, the additives used, and wine reviews from both experts and other consumers.
The impact of data strategies in the wine industry has enormous growth potential. Most interestingly, all types of companies in the industry can—not only achieve better performance in cultivation, storage, and distribution—but also open up an even broader
universe of possibilities to create even more attractive value propositions.
Julio César Blanco – July 15, 2022
