(AcademicWino) - Today, we will explore an exciting new technology designed to be an “end-to-end” cloud-based monitoring system from the vine to the wine:  SmartWine.

Created by a team of Macedonian scientists, SmartWine grew from the thought that wireless sensor technology networks have shown promise for both indoor and outdoor monitoring.  According to Business Week and the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT), wireless sensor networks are the direction of the future, which we’ve already seen over and over again through similar systems monitoring air pollution,water quality, and other environmental monitoring.

The concept of using wireless sensor technologies in vineyards is not completely new (example: Shelburne Vineyard in Vermont: 2012 and the Siega System), however, as with any technology, there are always developments, improvements, and upgrades.

Basically, the point of the SmartWine wireless sensor network is to monitor different environmental conditions in the vineyard and later in the winery, in order to provide the user with more accurate and real-time information in order to more carefully and efficiently monitor the grape growing and winemaking processes, which would ultimately result in potential improved quality of the wine from the beginning to the very end.  SmartWine was actually created using a few different wineries to ensure the system was functional and accurate in real-time situations.

hinking about it on a simple, not-uber technical scale, the SmartWine system uses sensors that are placed in the vineyard or in the cellar that can monitor various air, soil, and plant parameters and conditions (think: temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, leaf wetness, wind speed, soil-water tension, etc).  The information is then uploaded via the wireless technology built into the sensors to a cloud-based information gathering system which can then be accessed by individual users on an internet-based software platform.