CLIMACAL, Big Data at the service of the wineries to determine grape quality before the harvest

• This project, which emerged in October 2021 as a result of the collaboration between Bodegas Faustino, Pernod Ricard Winemakers Spain and NEIKER, continues to advance in the development of a new intelligent tool for early prediction of grape quality based on agro-climatic conditions in the vineyards.

During the development of the project, a collection of historical quality data from the 2015-2022 campaigns has been carried out, and a network of agroclimatic stations has been deployed in the plots analyzed in the project, so that, using interpolation techniques, historical agroclimatic data for those plots (2015-2022) have been generated. In this way, it has been possible to analyze data from 8 campaigns in order to obtain significant results.

The analysis of this information has revealed the influence of some climatic indicators such as the “Winkler Thermal Integral” on the final quality of the grapes. In addition, by using regression techniques, the project includes the development of a system for predicting the evolution of quality parameters that will take into account climatic forecasts provided by AEMET.

CLIMACAL is based on predictive models that will make it possible to determine the quality of the grapes before the harvest and thus help wineries to adapt their winemaking strategies, from the planning of the harvest (date, selected grape harvest, destination of the grapes according to the type of wine) to the design of products and processes (logistics, purchases, sales, etc.), as well as to plan future interventions and management both in the field and in the winery.

Taking into account the recent changes in consumption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the incipient economic crisis and the new trends in the wine market, tools based on the use of Big Data, such as CLIMACAL, can be of great help to wineries, providing support in decision making both in the field and in the winery and to be more flexible and better plan their strategies, and therefore, their productions and processes.

CLIMACAL project is co-financed by the Department of Economic Development and Infrastructures of the Basque Government and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), with a total subsidy of 72,165.25 € and will end in December 2022. However, information will continue to be integrated into the predictive model, so that its accuracy will improve in each campaign as the volume of available data increases.