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Some of the world's most traditional wineries can't resist a reboot.
We've explained in the past that swaths of savvy vineyards in California have embraced tech to boost yields and make better wines. That might not be surprising, given their proximity to Silicon Valley and the fact that many executives have used their tech-boom bucks to invest in Napa and Sonoma wineries.
But it's a whole other story in Europe, where centuries of tradition mean that wine is for the most part made according to good ol' fashioned approaches—especially in exclusive vineyards.
Now, Decanter magazine reports that perhaps the world's most prestigious wine-maker, Château Mouton Rothschild, is giving robots a shot. At its Château Clerc Milon estate, it's been carrying out tests with a robot called TED, pictured above, which roams around on wheels to cultivate soil and uproot weeds.
French vintners going on strike in 3, 2, 1...
(Score: 2) by idiot_king on Sunday December 03 2017, @03:48PM
Capitalist incongruence, once again. These robots could be used to replace the slave labor done by hardworking undocumented citizens while paying benefits for them in places like California and reducing workplace hazard, and heck those citizens could move up the ladder by then being trained to service those bots, reducing their hours in the fields and letting them spend more time with their families. Yet instead they get put into bourgeoisie empty luxury farms (with the name Rothschild no less, if that isn't a big implicit middle finger to everyone who can't afford said wine) to save much less time and money most likely compared to the situation I outlined first. Oh well, at least I can afford a phone with f*cking animojis on it, the thing all of us crushed under the heels of capitalism have been waiting for for centuries. Yay capitalism.