Technology and the Israeli wine industry

Israeli winemakers are leveraging technology to better understand the terroir and rapidly improve quality. This article looks at the various technical projects undertaken by Victor Schoenfeld, Head Winemaker at Golan Heights Winery. In addition, Professor Ben-Ami Bravdo, owner of Karmei Yosef Winery and former Head of the Viticulture Department at Hebrew University, shares his views on the subject:

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/technolo ... e-industry

Lev, Hello and Welcome to the Forum...

Important to remember that while technology, even technology at the cutting-edge, is important, no less critical to the success of wines is the training, experience, "touch", intuition and "gut-knowledge" of the winemaker.

Interesting to note that the link does not give a byline to the author. Bad manners on the part of one editor or another.

Best
Rogov

Quite interesting indeed.. though I am left wondering - with all that data coming in, how do they keep track of it all, much less make sense of it? That seems to me a far greater challenge than simply collecting information.

... with all that data coming in, how do they keep track of it all, much less make sense of it?

In a humorous tone one might say "that's why God invented computers". On a more serious note, much of this data is transcribed by computers and put on maps, both micro and micro that are readily analyzable by agronomists and winemakers. Truth be told, once explained those maps are not difficult even for the intelligent lay person to understand. ... Even wine critics.

Some may disagree with me but in the end, you will still see the best agronomists and winemakers going out to the field and both smelling and tasting the soil at various times of the year.

Best
Rogov

In a humorous tone one might say "that's why God invented computers". On a more serious note, much of this data is transcribed by computers and put on maps, both micro and micro that are readily analyzable by agronomists and winemakers. Truth be told, once explained those maps are not difficult even for the intelligent lay person to understand. ... Even wine critics.

"To err is human - to really foul up, it takes a computer."

I have a reasonable level of familiarity with using computers to make sense of data - when I'm not in here discussing wine, I double as a business intelligence specialist, which essentially means my job is to create applications that will help turn data into information and knowledge. Certainly a good amount of the information described is simple enough to deal with - simply map it out and you're set. However, working with sets such as the one described under "Climate", with second-by-second measurements, sounds significantly more difficult to deal with. I must admit that I am quite curious as to how this is handled at Golan Heights - call it professional curiosity. At the risk of a threadjack, I've also found myself wondering on occasion how you keep track of your tasting notes and whether they could be turned into an application similar to one such as this: http://demo.qlikview.com/QvAJAXZfc/open ... ymous=true (in Swedish, unfortunately, which makes it useless as anything more than an example from my perspective).

Back on track, I certainly agree with your final point - technology may enhance winemaking, but it will not replace human interaction completely, merely help nudge it in the right direction.

Or, Hi...

The question of turning my data base into an App (I love those shorthand computer-language words) is under consideration. Alas, more complex than the Swedish site to which you link for in addition to the vital statistics the App, like my data has to include those, the tasting note and the score. Also has to be a system that will automatically insert re-tastings and re-evaluations while leaving the earlier ones for reference.

It will be no easy task to get some 55,000 tasting notes in appropriate format*. As I say though, the project is under consideration, much depending on whether my publisher will find it at least potentially profitable somehow. As to how that might work, like with my books, I write them and leave the onerous job of selling them entirely to him, my own acumen in the business world being as close to nil as one can get without being in the bankruptcy courts.

Best
Rogov

*And that number does not include wines such as Chateau Garlic, Chateau Adolph Hitler and what is supposed to pass for wine that is sold in Nazereth as "Cana", the vendors of which are wililng to guarantee contains at least a miniscule percentage of the wine produced by Jesus at Kfar Cana.

At the risk of a threadjack, I've also found myself wondering on occasion how you keep track of your tasting notes and whether they could be turned into an application similar to one such as this: http://demo.qlikview.com/QvAJAXZfc/open ... ymous=true (in Swedish, unfortunately, which makes it useless as anything more than an example from my perspective).

I think you and I might need to sit down on this one and see if we can come up with something. I was actually thinking the other day about asking you about an application of tasting notes using the app.