World’s largest blockchain wine trial to take place in Clare Valley
The world’s largest ever blockchain wine trial will be taking place in Clare in the coming months.
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The world’s largest ever blockchain wine trial will be run in the Clare Valley over summer, involving a dozen different wineries.
While blockchain trials have been undertaken by the wine industry overseas, they have involved single producers, rather than a range of wineries.
Clare Valley winemakers David Travers and Jeff Grosset, winners of the Premier’s Blockchain Innovation Challenge, have a prototype of the blockchain technology they hope will revolutionise the wine industry ready for the trial.
In March, Mr Travers and Mr Grosset, both members of the Clare Valley Wine & Grape Association, were awarded $50,000 to progress their innovation, which combines QR code and blockchain technology to prove a wine’s provenance and authenticity.
With a simple scan of a phone, all the details about a bottle of wine, and how it got from the vineyard to consumer, is revealed.
“It’s a process designed to capture all the details along the winemaking process and digitise them,” Mr Travers said.
“It means a producer, or a consumer or regulator can locate data easily.”
Mr Grosset said a major aim with the technology was to ensure wine was not misrepresented by false labelling.
“Wine Australia used to say there was very little misrepresentation in the industry, but it has increased,” he said.
But it is not only proof of provenance that can be achieved through the technology. It could also help to speed up vineyard operations and eliminate much of the paperwork associated with the industry, by providing a digital footprint with fruit and wine time-stamped and geolocated through the manufacturing process.
Mr Grosset believes the technology could further improve the already high regard Australian wine has on the world scene.
“If the majority of producers adopted this technology, it would make wine fraud virtually impossible,” he said.
“I hope that Australian wine gains a further lift in its reputation, by being leaders in this technology.”
Mr Travers said the technology would also mean audits of vineyards could be completed without having to step foot on the property.
To develop the technology, Mr Travers and Mr Grosset partnered with Guardtime, a company that was founded in Estonia.
Guardtime product manager David Shorthouse said the company was excited to be involved in the project, as it went a long way in meeting consumer needs.
Mr Shorthouse said with the general public eager to learn about the quality of the food and drink they were consuming – and an increasingly tech-savvy world – the technology was well-positioned to meet that consumer demand.
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A trial of the technology is being run in a dozen wineries in the Clare Valley across the summer months.
“It’s a very significant pilot for the wine industry globally,” Mr Shorthouse said.
It is hoped a commercial product can be released to market by the middle of next year.
“What’s really exciting is seeing the evolution of connection – consumers and wine operators having access to data that they’d never had previously,” Mr Travers said.