Japanese Wine Meets Big Data

Wine from Okunota Winery, bottled and ready for shipment.

Nakamura Masakazu explains a Fujitsu sensor installed in his fields at the Okunota Winery. The data collected is transmitted via a wireless network.

The Chikuma Wine Valley’s Villa d’Est Gardenfarm and Winery is in Tōmi, Nagano. The fluvial terrace home to the vineyard gets plenty of sunshine and is ideal for grape-growing.

Sensing equipment in a field farmed by Izawa Takahisa, of Tateshina, Nagano, records data in the Chikuma Wine Valley. Izawa, a new grower in the area, moved to the area from Tokyo four years ago.

Researcher Kameyama Naoki analyzing and recording the composition of grapes taken from the fields every morning

Charts showing changes in the grapes’ composition. This information is analyzed together with data on weather and soil.

Fully ripened Merlot grapes awaiting harvesting (Tateshina, Nagano).

The e-Kakashi system on display at the Agri World trade fair held in Chiba in October 2017. A new model of the device, incorporating AI remote controls for opening ventilating ports in greenhouses and valves for watering fields, made its debut at the 2017 show.

The e-Kakashi “gate way” base unit (left) and a sensor node.