Making wine in California, France, and even Serbia, consulting winemaker Julien Fayard has a broad view of the winemaking world. His constant monitoring, evaluation, and investment in winemaking technology benefit both his own and his clients’ wineries. Julien offers insight into winemaking technology on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as some of the specific technologies he utilizes.
Detailed Show Notes:
Julien’s background: French, came to the US in 2006 and worked for Phillipe Melka, started his consulting practice in 2013, built two wineries and manages three others; mostly Napa (~85%), but also makes wine from Sonoma, Sierra Foothills, Provence, Bordeaux, and Serbia
Uses trial & error to evaluate new winemaking technology
Usually, a trigger that causes each tech adoption
Hears about new tech from travel and conversations with other wineries and tech companies
French tech is mostly involved with wine contact (e.g., yeast, oak treatment), the US is mostly logistics, mechanization, automation of labor, and CA is slow to mechanize vineyard work
Monitors the slowly evolving knowledge base in winemaking - most tech innovations are slight derivatives of existing knowledge (e.g., sulfur automation)
To buy into a new tech: other people using it, company viability (and ability to scale), practicality of solution (e.g., barrel door for fermentation did not take into consideration time and the challenge to move between barrels)
ROI calculation includes cost savings, risk assessments, and quantity or quality improvements
Generally does not implement things that could move costs more than 10-20%
The most significant variable cost driver is when volume drops (e.g., waste, accidents, filtering, bulking out wine) - each tank is ~$100k of wine
Fruition Sciences did a lot of sap flow analysis, but never got mass adoption
Well monitoring technology is happening, and may be required soon
Communications modules for sensors are getting much cheaper, enabling more tech
Vinwizard (NZ) - wall winery automation
Innovint - winery SW management system
Sentia - hand wine analyzer (VA, malic, alcohol, SO2)
Oenofrance - a system for faster oak extraction
Excited about new destemmers, probes for monitoring wines (for “modern natural wine,” in-ground amphora aging)
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