Wine Australia and the AWRI have embarked on a series of research projects that focus on taking research outcomes through to impact in grapegrowing and winemaking businesses. These ‘Impact Projects’ are the result of a substantial rethink on how projects are structured and, more importantly, how their direction and focus is informed to best serve the wine sector. In the following Q&A, Wine Australia’s new Research Impact Manager Josh Hixson explains the benefits of focussing investment towards research impact.
What is research impact and what does it look like?
Impact is a broad term, but it is intentionally broad because we don’t want to put barriers on what we are looking to achieve for the sector. Impact can be extension of a new practice or process, development of a new product or service, or push towards a change in attitude.
What brings things together under an ‘impact’ umbrella is firstly that any solution is guided by a fuller understanding of the problem, including size, cost and causes, existing and competing solutions, and exactly who has the problem. Then it’s about ensuring that the solution being developed is not only technically effective but also in a format that works into their day-to-day, has a clear benefit over existing options and can be sourced at a time that it’s required.
What is new in this approach that we haven’t done before?
As a generalisation, we have tended to treat research as a technical discipline, which then swaps to a behavioural discipline when we do extension work. In simple terms, that means we make something, then tell people how they can use it. This can result in a solution that isn’t fit for use.
Under the impact project structure, what comes in between is a period where we work with end users on a prototype to bring the technological solution closer to the needs of a potential user or, conversely, find out it is not fit for purpose.
Because this period involves a mix of technical expertise and behavioural understanding, it’s often called the ‘messy middle’. But a well-navigated messy middle takes a concept from the ‘can we do it?’ phase through ‘should we do it?’ including the size of the problem and need for a solution. Then we work with the intended end-users to understand ‘how we do it?’ to make sure it fits nicely into the hands of the people who have the problem.
How do we navigate the ‘messy middle’?
Navigation relies on getting our directions from the end users. They know what they want and what will convince them to change their practices. Our job is to ask them what information they need and then deliver it. In short, if we are trying to navigate the messy middle, we’ve gone wrong. The best navigators are the ones who know the destination.
What does this navigation look like in an Impact Project?
As researchers, we have to step away from a sole focus on technical experiments and reconcile that people don’t just decide to throw ‘cool science’ into their businesses. Once we know that they have a need for it, the decision to adopt it is made on factors like efficiency, performance, cost, accessibility and ease of implementation. Therefore, we have to wrap our science in those decision-making metrics and develop financial models and supply chain understanding.
These projects need to consider who will use the solution and why, how it gets to them, how we build longevity into the solution, and how much the solution will cost to create and to use.
How does a solution get built with longevity?
What we know is that most research outcomes that become a product, service or education platform aren’t going to be a central focus for researchers forever. For something to take on its own life it needs a steward, or someone who is dedicated to maintaining, updating and providing it on an ongoing basis. If it doesn’t have a steward, it will always be a static research output that becomes antiquated at some point, like an app that stops being supported.
The impact project process takes a two-pronged approach whereby we work towards business models that are, at the very least, financially and technologically self-sustaining, but also by including end-users and delivery partners into the project. We know that people value things more highly when they have contributed to their creation, and this is what we are looking to do in creating stewardship.
Where are we up to now?
Wine Australia has a suite of projects running at the AWRI that are using this approach, as well as a couple of projects outside of the AWRI that are starting to incorporate some of these principles. The AWRI projects recently completed a full round of initiation, research, review and refresh of the endpoints, so we are in the process of looking back on those projects to see what worked and what didn’t. What is clear is that there have been obvious wins in navigating the messy middle and finding insights that redirect the course of projects.
The following is a summary of the current ongoing AWRI Impact Projects:
Single-step heat and cold stabilisation
A new product to improve white wine stabilisation has been developed that would allow wineries to replace bentonite addition and cooling, both of which present substantial environmental and economic costs. The product aims to replace current methods by offering both heat and cold stabilisation in one step, depending on winery size and current practices.
Small and medium wineries benefit due to the high cost of wine loss to bentonite lees, as well as the high cost of electricity for cooling. Larger wineries will require the technology to work well with their existing processes, such as high-solids crossflow filtration or electrodialysis. Economic studies showed that this new method could lower costs, especially for smaller producers without methods to recover wine from lees. Future challenges will include meeting current and future regulatory requirements, ensuring consistency in the product, and balancing the costs and benefits of the new technology.
Smart surfaces
Consultation showed a clear demand for a copper fining alternative to remove reductive aromas but preserve positive wine aroma, flavour and palate weight. A previously developed ‘smart surface’ selectively eliminated sulfidic off-aromas from wine while preserving desired tropical thiol and ‘gun flint’ aromas, as well as maintaining SO2 concentrations.
This work showed potential for the surface to be integrated into filtration devices, processing aids, closures or other packaging material. The regenerative capabilities were also successfully demonstrated, making them practical for reapplication in wineries. An added benefit was that regeneration can be carried out on-site, providing a convenient option for wineries.
Currently, the cost of smart surface technology is significantly higher than that of copper fining. Key areas for improvement include optimising regeneration capabilities and conducting storage studies to validate long-term efficacy in preventing reductive aromas. The next stage of the initiative will focus on enhancing the economic viability of smart surface technology.
Brettanomyces diagnostics
While there are detection methods for Brettanomyces, they all have drawbacks in terms of cost, time or expertise required. This project aims to develop a robust, field-deployable, diagnostic solution for the early detection of Brettanomyces in wine.
Consultation showed that most wineries rely on identification via sensory analysis of a batched barrel sample. This practice, which only provides remediation rather than prevention, could also miss a problem barrel altogether due to the dilution of spoilage compounds below their sensory threshold. While the current costs of Brettanomyces analysis for wineries are low, most of the costs are incurred after confirmation of a suspect barrel or parcel and involve the destruction of wine and barrel or treatment and downgrade of wine.
The winery-deployable detection kit for Brettanomyces has been confirmed in laboratory testing and successfully manufactured by project partners. The prototypes will be taken into winery trials in the next phase of this work to determine how the analysis workflow fits in with winery laboratory skill sets and processes.
Generating value from ferment carbon dioxide
Recent supply shortages of carbon dioxide and elevated prices promoted interest from wine producers in capturing and using the carbon dioxide emitted from ferments. This project is evaluating the economic performance and technical challenges associated with carbon dioxide capture in wineries.
The seasonality of carbon dioxide production in the wine industry makes capture and reuse difficult. Given that carbon dioxide is currently a by-product of industries that are closely linked with fossil fuels, the long-term supply is uncertain as the economy decarbonises.
In the 2024 vintage, pipework for removing carbon dioxide was installed on the lids of four white fermenters and four red fermenters. Apart from moisture, the carbon dioxide was found to be very pure (>99%). Carbon dioxide samples from red ferments had higher levels of impurities than samples from white ferments, and sulfur compounds in the red ferment carbon dioxide will likely need treatment before storage and reuse.
This lid-based system used in 2024 was a suitable prototype, but would be too unwieldy for a permanent installation. The 2025 vintage design will use pipework coming from the tank neck.