I recently wrote a series of reported articles on emerging technology in precision viticulture for the Napa Valley Wine Academy. Here’s the first one:
Whether you’re enjoying the breeze in your hair while strolling through a vineyard, tasting a new vintage straight from the barrel with the winemaker, or savoring a leisurely lunch on a sun-soaked winery patio, it’s easy to fall in love with the romance of wine. So easy that, sometimes, we forget that grapes are actually an agricultural crop. But as any grape grower will tell you, their struggles are the same as any other year-round farmer’s: scarce labor availability, potential health risks, achieving target yields and quality levels, and ever-escalating costs. To combat this, much of American crop production increasingly relies on high-tech precision agriculture to boost yields and quality while decreasing costs. Many technologies now used in vineyards started out in the production of other crops, such as corn or wheat. While many students of wine are familiar with mechanized harvesting or mechanical pruning, other beneficial technologies are newer and less well-known to consumers.
In a new series of articles, we’ll explore some of these newer ways viticulturists are using technology to increase safety and grow better grapes with less work. We’ll be focusing on land, air, and water, each in turn, considering how new technologies work, what they are replacing, and how they are helpful.
Noelle Hale 