August 24, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Conexus Venture Capital’s Emmertech Fund is taking steps to drive innovation in the winemaking industry by leading a $3.1 million Seed round for Vancouver-based BarrelWise Technologies Ltd. Ag Capital Canada also provided additional funding to the company.

(Emmertech has had a banner week – also leading a $26 million Series C for precision ag chem company Vive Crop Protection.)

Grape winemaking has a history going back millennia. It has been long understood that the earliest evidence of the practice dates back about 7,000 years in Iran. However, scientists have found pottery fragments south of Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, showing evidence that Stone Age people of the region were growing grapes and making wine as far back as 8,000 years ago. 

Over 8,000 years of tradition have carried the practice forward to today, where cutting-edge technologies are merging with history to bring the industry to a defining moment ripe for new solutions.

Founded in 2018, BarrelWise develops integrated measurement and data systems that improve the efficiency and level of control in winemaking.

The company’s flagship product – FS1 – is a rapid, cloud-connected, free SO2 analyzer that allows wineries to take routine S02 measurements directly in the cellar up to 15 times faster than traditional lab analysis.

A single person can easily complete the full analysis cycle in only 70 seconds. Samples are automatically collected, and then analyzed in real-time, with the results being automatically linked to the vessel and recorded in a database.

“As investors in the agriculture space, we see many precision-ag tools applied in the cropping industry,” said Scott Crawford, Ag Capital Canada. “What we like about BarrelWise is that they have developed a tool that makes it feasible to apply these types of concepts to the winemaking process. Given the large variations of SO2 from barrel to barrel that can occur in a winemaker’s cellar, we believe that the industry will greatly benefit from the solution BarrelWise has developed.”

Through this tech platform, winemakers are able to collect high-resolution datasets on their barrels and tanks – data that over time will reflect trends, variances, and correlations that provide valuable insight into the process of winemaking, while also helping to avoid expensive wine quality loss.

“With our Emmertech fund, we love finding opportunities in the world of agriculture where innovators are bringing speed and simplicity to solving problems across the supply chain,” said Sean O’Connor, managing director, Conexus Venture Capital & Emmertech.

“BarrelWise places the traditionally slow and expensive lab process of identifying SO2 levels directly into the cellar,” O’Connor continued. “Couple this innovative solution with a top-tier founding team, led by Jason Sparrow, and we feel we’ve got a real gem of a company added into our portfolio.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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