A smoke sensor developed by La Trobe University researchers that has the potential to save hundreds of millions of dollars in lost wine production, is in the process of being rolled out across the wine industry, with monitors most recently being used to track the impact of bush res that have ravaged Victoria’s Grampians.

Wine Industry Smoke Detectors (WISDs) colloquially known as wizards, track smoke events like bush res and burnoffs around vineyards and advise winegrowers whether it is likely to taint their grapes.

And if they need to discard their season’s harvest or use winemaking techniques to remove the taint. 

Data taken during trials of the sensor through the 2020 bush fires that devastated wine regions across Australia’s east coast, found $100-$150million worth of grapes were needlessly discarded over unfounded concerns they were tainted by smoke.

Australian agtech provider Goanna Ag has now signed on to commercialise the WISDs over the next two years, during which time the hardware and algorithm will be further validated in real-world re events and the network of WISDs expanded to other wine regions across Australia.

Professor Ian Porter, a researcher from the School of Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment at La Trobe, leads the team that developed the WISDs and the risk model during the past decade.

He says trials in vineyards across south-eastern Australia had found smoke did not taint wine grapes as much as viticulturalists believed.

He says this meant vineyards could avoid significant losses of grapes that winegrowers had previously believed were ruined.

“Growers think that all smoke causes smoke taint, but data collected by our team has for the first time globally linked the amount of fresh smoke needed in vineyards to smoke taint in the bottle,” Ian explains.

“This has been the holy grail of research that’s now being solved,” he says.

“This sensor has the potential to save a heap of grapes they would usually throw away, which can be financially and emotionally devastating for winegrowers. It’s one of the reasons we developed the WISDs.”

The prototype smoke loggers have been developed by La Trobe University researchers and supported with funding from Wine Australia, Latrobe University and other partners, including the Victorian and Australian governments and regional wine associations.

A network of 100 prototype loggers was deployed in vineyards in north-east Victoria after the catastrophic bush fires in 2020, the technology was refined in years that followed.

The data loggers calculate risk ratings for smoke taint drawn from a vast database of smoke, grapes and wine data collected by La Trobe during more than 70 controlled burns and eight major bushfires.

This knowledge links smoke dose to smoke composition, phenol levels in grapes and wine and their sensory outcomes in wines.

It also incorporates the critical risk factors for smoke taint, including burn conditions, distance from the burn, grapevine variety and the timing of exposure during the season.

The smoke and other data collected by the WISDs, such as temperature and humidity, are transmitted to a central server that calculates a traffic light risk rating for smoke taint.

The risk rating is communicated to vineyard managers in real time via mobile phone app and can also be accessed via a dedicated website.

Goanna Ag winegrape business development lead Jock Ferguson says they had a track record of working with proven science to help growers solve genuine, well-recognised challenges.

“We are particularly excited to be involved in the commercialisation of the WISDs. They are a vital industry breakthrough with appeal to stakeholders throughout the grape and wine sector in Australia as well as winegrowing regions around the world,” Jock says.

Ian says findings also show in the vast majority of cases, winegrowers need not be concerned by smoke from planned controlled burns tainting grapes.

“The WISD is an amazing breakthrough for Australian growers and wine producers. It provides the sector with an extremely valuable tool to use during any smoke event to determine whether there is a problem or not”, he says.

“Having results in real time greatly reduces stress for growers and winemakers and allows them to market their grapes and produce wine with confidence.”