How do you improve efficiency without compromising quality? Achieving that goal has become even more essential and challenging for the wine industry in the face of climate change, increased competition on a world level, labor shortages, and other issues. Yet, one of the world’s largest wine producers is succeeding, paired with SAP.
Founded in Chile more than 139 years ago, Viña Concha y Toro owns approximately 12,000 hectares (more than 29,600 acres) of prime vineyards, with production facilities in Chile, Argentina, and the United States. It distributes wine to more than 140 countries worldwide with wineries including Concha Y Toro, Viña Don Melchor, Viña Cono Sur, and Viña Maipo in Chile, Bodega Trivento Argentina, and, in the US, Bonterra Organic Estates, formerly known as Fetzer Vineyards.
From grapes to wine—a journey of uncertainty
Wineries must consider many factors to achieve maximum efficiency, yield, and quality. First, there’s the life of the grapes. As the grapes grow, their annual development can be affected by factors such as climate, sunlight, water, vine density, soil, and nutrients. These factors can influence the quality and quantity of a grape crop. And every year, the degree of influence of each factor can differ.
Once the grapes move to the fermentation process, again, many variables come into play that can affect the quality and quantity of every batch. They can include temperature, pump-over (a technique to improve wine development by moving the freshly crushed juice around in a vat), and the density of the wine.
Facility and human factors also must be considered, including the capacity of a winery’s fermentation vats to process grapes in a certain period and the availability of workers and related costs. To help wineries plan for and respond to all those factors, they need a solution that goes beyond their traditional manual operations, especially for gathering and analyzing critical data about the growing season, winemaking process, facility operations, and labor force. Until recently, Viña Concha y Toro was a member of that group.
A vintage system for its vintages
The workflow of Viña Concha y Toro involved numerous legacy manual paper-based processes, which could lead to errors and didn’t offer a fast, integrated method to access phenological and operational data. That made it challenging to predict future conditions and wine potential and make informed decisions to improve efficiency and quality.
The manual processes were also time-consuming. For example, staff had to spend an extensive amount of time overseeing the fermentation vats at critical harvest times.
A full-bodied solution
Working with its strategic partner BlueBoot Business Software and SAP, Viña Concha y Toro created a SmartWinery solution that’s based on the SAP Business Technology Platform. The solution automates many processes throughout producer’s facilities, enhancing access to critical data as well as streamlining and accelerating tasks.
The solution has four modules for efficiency and quality:
- Online monitoring of the wine fermentation, including temperature, pump-over, and density
- A winemaking simulator with a machine learning model to help predict the potential quality of a wine
- Winemaking recipes based on optimization
- An analysis of the producer’s historical data
Fermentation optimization
SmartWinery has digitized more than 1,000 vinification processes in three of the producer’s wineries: Lourdes, Lolol, and San Javier. In the Lourdes winery alone, there has been a 28% increase in capacity by optimizing the fermentation process in each of the 32 vats. One cycle has been added to each vat, from 3.5 to 4.5 cycles, allowing more wine to be created. That improvement has saved Viña Concha y Toro $375,000 in the cost of acquiring additional fermentation vats.
A memorable year
On the Viña Concha y Toro website are the words, “We exist to transform each glass of wine and each encounter around the world into a memorable experience.” And SAP has given the producer a memorable experience as well with an award for the wine producer’s innovation and success.
Earlier this year, Viña Concha y Toro received an Honorable Mention in the 2023 SAP Innovation Awards, which is now celebrating its 10th anniversary. To learn more about Viña Concha y Toro, see the producer’s pitch deck.
