Vinsites is the name used by Wine Australia to describe a major project being undertaken by the organisation to develop a foundation data set of Australia’s winegrape vineyards, including area, location and varieties.

The project fits under Strategy 4 of Wine Australia’s strategic plan: Improving resource management and sustainability.

Stage 1: locating vineyards

Stage 1 of the VinSites project is the geolocation of all winegrape vineyards in Australia. This is called the National Vineyard Scan. The vineyards in Australia’s 65 wine regions will be accurately mapped for the first time using high-resolution satellite images and advanced machine learning to automatically recognise vineyards. Consilium Technology has been engaged by Wine Australia to deliver the National Scan for three years from 2018-2020.

Winegrape and wine levy-payers will be able to view the mapped vineyards in a web interface being developed by Consilium. The software and the web interface are known as GAIA. Grapegrowers can also pay for additional crop health insights through NDVI imagery in the GAIA software.

For more information on Consilium and GAIA, visit https://projectgaia.ai/.

The longer term: area by variety information

The next stage will be to determine the area of each variety grown in each region, as this is essential to understanding Australia’s grape supply and how it relates to demand for our wines. This information used to be provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics but has not been collected since 2015.

For more information on the Vinsites project contact Peter Bailey, Manager, Market Insights on 8228 2000 or peter.bailey@wineaustralia.com