Playing Pong was wondrous. An incredible marvel of technology with mind-blowing graphics, including a bat that actually moved as I twiddled the dial on a sleek box, and an addictive pinging sound every time I hit the ball. My Mum and Dad did not share my delight. “Our generation invented televisions – now get off it, it’ll rot your brains.”. In turn, I sagely told my boys, “Our generation gave you computer games – now, go and play outside.” 

That simple game heralded the start of a revolution. Now I can sit at my desk and check soil moisture levels in the vineyard, order cellar operations with automatic and detailed instructions and sell wine by setting up a flash sale. Oh, the irony. 

My boys will undoubtedly tell their kids; “We gave you Artificial Intelligence – it’s gonna kill mankind, use your own brains instead”.

I recently heard a podcast (another gift to the next generation) that explained how, among other things, AI can transmit smell and taste from one location to another. I asked ChatGPT to tell me if my high alcohol wine made it more or less susceptible to Brettanomyces yeast spoilage, and it spat out an answer that was both accurate and went well beyond the science I learned at university.

We are now all well aware of the AI revolution in front of us, hoping it doesn’t hurt us, or our jobs. Up until I heard the aforementioned podcast, I was confident growing grapes and making wine would only benefit by giving us better tools to put better wine in the bottle.

I still believe there will be major benefits from the revolution – I even believe there will be people left after the AI apocalypse to drink fine wine. But I also pondered what we are losing.

For example, if we made an AI model the sole judge of wine quality at wine shows, would that result in rewarding generic, personality-free wine?

In the past 18 months our team has won show trophies for wines made from Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon (plus blends of these two), Grenache, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. We also got our first Gold Medal at the National Fortified Show for a Vintage Fortified wine. All of these wines come from Mudgee, not the region’s most famous for these varieties, that have therefore defined the style (Barossa, Coonawarra, McLaren Vale, Tasmania, Margaret River and Rutherglen.) The winning wines are all great wines within their varietal context but are also subtly different in their regional context. They are proven, in blind tastings by trained humans, to be equal and often better than their competitors. It must be recognised that all of these awarded wines were entered in multiple shows yet were only awarded the highest gong in one. Indeed, a couple missed altogether.

While in the past I have railed about the capricious nature of wine shows, it made me think that there is one upside to not being analysed by a scientifically brilliant and totally objective show judge with a fixed perspective on regimented wine styles, as an AI model would be. Correct me if I am wrong, but Huntington Estate customers want wines that are full of personality and different versions of varieties and styles. We are one of hundreds of wineries producing different versions of wines. This makes us an important part of an evolutionary process that serendipitously produces variations of great interest to us wine lovers.

And you can thank me later kiddies, but we, and the generation before, gave you that. To their credit, the current generation even has a name for this happenstance process – Skibidi. Cue agonised groans from Freddy and Charlie at the old fella misusing their slang. I think we might have given them that too... I distinctly remember the cringe! 

Cheers, Tim.