How artificial intelligence in the cellar can make the best wine

Barolo and industry 4.0 seem like an oxymoron of winemaking. Actually any wine, to which we associate taste or memory of something that concerns us, can be characterized by many attributes, but not the industrial one. It is a mockery, an affront, a diminution of the intelligence of the hands.

But second Claudio Viberti, third generation barolist of the family business of the same name from Vergne (in the province of Cuneo), one must not be betrayed by the appearances of the term industry 4.0: “If applied to our world, it serves to safeguard and enhance the craftsmanship of a product which today, for various reasons, including i climate changes, we are no longer able to do as we would like – he told us – The goal of maintaining that taste for tradition forces us to behave differently. We can’t do it with the same methods, it would be a joke.”

Metropolitan certainties could falter: where they still exist the myth of the “farmer’s wine” (which in the Langhe are careful not to drink, with rare exceptions) some episodes on innovation in the cellar have been lost. Technology, and above all the 4.0 declination, allows for more accurate monitoring, prediction of the effects of interventions, punctual management of timing and other stages of production. Because until proven otherwise squeeze the grapes and put them in the barrel it is a very different thing from making wine.

Industry 4.0 in the cellar

In Vergne, in the municipal territory of Barolo, the new Viberti cellar under construction it houses 10 4.0 fermenters of about 7,000 liters each. At first glance they might seem like ordinary steel cylinders, as seen in many wineries, but they allow vinification and post-vinification processes with computerized management and control, even remotely.

Practically sensors, movement rotors internal and artificial intelligence facilitate the work of the winemaker. They facilitate, but certainly do not replace. Because we are talking about professionals who have a very clear objective, but little control over the key ingredient of their work, namely nature: at each harvest they have to solve the tetris that nature brings down from the sky and finds on earth.

Without going into too much detail about winemaking, it is good to know that climate change is the main culprit of the difficulties of today. Once upon a time the Nebbiolo grapes, with which Barolo is made, were harvested on All Saints’ Day, November 1st: “With the first mists, that’s why it’s called that. But the temperatures have changed and I don’t remember in the last 10 years of a harvest that has begun after October 15th. This means picking hotter grapes with a different sugar component and alcohol content”, Viberti pointed out to us.

In summary, the procedural recipe that was once used has been overturned. Of course, the harvested grapes, deprived of the stalks, are always gently pressed and placed in the fermenters for start the alcoholic fermentation and maceration. But, as 27-year-old Andrea Mastrantuono, the company’s oenologist, explained to us, this first process today takes between 7 and 20 days, “even if there are cellars that last up to two months”. And in this period it’s all a game of managing the kinetics of fermentation, driven mainly by temperature regulation. Only heating is more complicated than cooling, as it is more difficult to implement it uniformly. Here is the fermenter first of all it manages to be more precise in action and secondly to provide more accurate data.

After that, as Mastrantuono recalled, you can intervene remotely 24 hours a day via PC or smartphone and also receive any security alerts. This facilitation helps to reduce the time of each human action by 80%, with a consequent increase in the general quality. An important help for a medium-small company like Viberti (150-200 thousand bottles a year).

You have the same advantage when batonage is practiced: “As soon as the malolactic fermentation is over, the solid residue that settles is a noble lees which, if well stirred and stirred, gives flavours, aromas and sweetness. That sense of roundness that we often hear about”, explained the winemaker.

The recipe suggested by artificial intelligence

In every Italian cellar there is always a register that the oenologist constantly updates with every day data and the chronicle of the actions carried out. An expert eye can reconstruct from this information a sort of recipe applied to production of a single wine, which is obviously characterized by a unique and distinctive taste. By changing the variables, the result changes, and in the production of wine it is a challenge that relates objectives of taste, nature and human competence.

Here, in this sense Viberti has included the new 4.0 fermenters in the management center all data and recipes used in the last 10 years. In this way the AI ​​is able to suggest analogies between vintages: “It does not provide solutions but reminds us of the vintage to inspire us. And so on the one hand we know which actions it is correct to replicate and which ones may not have given the expected results”. underlined Claudio Viberti.

The winemaker, as he always has, will continue to observe the color of the must and listen to its bubbling to evaluate the kinetics of fermentation, but today it can simply have a more accurate historical memory in the analysis of the details: “The study was created to ensure less intervention on the wines by raising their quality and favoring their expression”.

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From medical to cellar

The latest news concerns the introduction of “an exceptional piece of machinery”as assured by Viberti himself: “It derives from the medical field and is a molecular gas filter. The wine passes through the device and a potential difference is created with an inert process gas, which can be nitrogen or argon. This process reduces oxygen and consequently also CO 2. And so we can reduce sulfur dioxide to a minimum, every risk of oxidation and also (in some wines) to eliminate that little bubble which is sometimes created naturally but flattens the taste”.

The central theme is that oxygen is a key component in the fermentation and maturation phases, but in pre-bottling it is an enemy. It is responsible for the oxidation that practically changes the color of the wine and eliminates its taste. This explains the presence of sulfur dioxide (explained on the label): it protects and has an antiseptic action on both bacteria and yeasts. With the 4.0 device developed by the Venetian Experti his employment is reduced to a minimumalmost 40-50% less.

In short, according to Viberti, “we shouldn’t close our eyes to technologies that can enhance the traditional nature we all seek. More than modernit should be contemporaries“.