Vinification is the process of turning grapes into wine. Wine production is directly linked to vinification monitoring by measuring certain critical parameters. Buying the testing equipment is not an option for most winemakers: a spectrometer for wine applications can go up to €150k (high CAPEX) and requires highly qualified operating personnel (high OPEX). Therefore, the most common methods used by EU producers for vinification monitoring are sampling and offline testing which also still involve enormous costs to the wine producers. Indeed, in a worldwide market worth €261 billion, winemakers are spending yearly €667 million in Europe alone for vinification technologies. Winegrid® is a real time and remote monitoring platform that will allow winemakers to have an eye inside the wine vat. Winegrid is a smart solution based on a network of innovative sensors placed in a container (barrel, tank, press) during the vinification process of wine. It is capable of providing, for the first time ever, real-time analysis and control the 5 crucial vinification parameters (level, colour, turbidity, density and temperature), sending information directly to a specially built online platform. It is the internet of things (IoT) for wine production. This project fills a highly desired need in Europe by revolutionising the vinification process. Our commercialisation plan is to sell to European winemakers that want to reduce costs, improve efficiency and the quality of their wine. For this project, we intend optimise our equipment through miniaturisation and gain a greater understanding of different market segments within our target markets. Following this in phase 2 we plan to demonstrate our product’s benefits in a large scale in order to reduce the entry barriers in a traditional field as is winemaking.

During vinification, to produce quality wine, it is critically important to monitor certain parameters: density, turbidity, colour, level, temperature and alcohol content. However, such monitoring is time and resource intensive, requiring expensive investments in advanced equipment and high skilled personnel. Manual, sparse and timed collection of data also means that the data gathered can neither be used for real time corrective actions nor can be integrated with AI tools to provide forecasting capabilities. The revolutionary Winegrid combines fiber optic sensors and communication channels with advanced analytics and AI software to create a complete monitoring solution. It offers great value as it can reduce the vinification monitoring cost and raise the quality of the wine produced, likely to result in increased sales volume. It gives winemakers instantaneous—anytime and anywhere—access to monitoring data and provide real-time accurate analysis with a precision of 99.9% and accuracy of 99.8%. Compact and easily connectable (IoT) hardware and cloud based software allow Winegrid to scale to any size of wine production. During the phase 2 project, Watgrid is set to miniaturise the Winegrid design units to 200mm diameter model, develop a control unit to integrate with automation equipment and upgrade AI tools and user interface to enable predictive reporting. Further the industrial supply chain will be validated, in-house assembly line will be scaled up and 200 Winegrid systems will be produced for end user trials. After demonstrating and validating the usability and commercial viability of Winegrid through such in-field trials, Wartgrid will apply for CE and other regulatory certifications. The project results will be exploited to scale up to commercialisation and achieve a successful market introduction of Winegrid. Post commercialization, Watgrid hopes to integrate wider range of sensors to expand the applicability of Winegrid to monitor other liquids.