Winemakers will gain a cost-effective digital opportunity to manage the quality of their wine with the new real-time process monitoring platform under development in the COMFY project. Using sensors to gather data during yeast fermentation, wineries will be able to adjust and steer the process to obtain the distinct quality and flavour they need to stand out on the market.

Following a feasibility study, the project partners are now ready to validate the prototype monitoring platform. Ultimately, it could mean better quality wines at lower cost and with less waste due to quality deviations – benefits that, eventually, could be extended to breweries, too.

Lead SME in this project is FreeSense Solutions, specialist in integrated sensor systems and IOT and a subsidiary of Innovius. Partners BrewPi and Winery&Herbs are experts in sensor deployment in beer and wine fermentation monitoring systems and wine production, respectively.

Final report summary
We have partially reached our goals in this project. An integrated and food-safe multi-sensor probe has been designed and connected to a prototype monitoring data platform. Within this multi-probe, a new sensor system has been designed and tested that monitors the density of the fermenting wine must in a cost-effective way. This changing density is a very clear measure for the progress of fermentation. Acidity, oxidation and temperature are also monitored via the multi-sensor and modular probe. The next steps are to obtain large amounts of fermentation data to develop the fermentation control algorithms further and obtain accurate process knowledge.