Blockchain technology applied to wine value chain traceability

Blockchain can help the wine industry to guarantee the authenticity and provenance of wine in order to improve its positioning and reputation.

The need for traceability in the wine value chain is becoming inevitable as a result of increasing counterfeiting, adulteration, excessive preservatives, fertilisers or pesticides. In order to solve these problems, the wine industry needs a system that guarantees the origin and traceability of the product, of each bottle of wine itself, and that allows the final consumer to verify the composition and the entire production process from the harvesting of the grapes to consumption at the table.

Currently, all the traceability systems we know are based on barcodes, RFID or radio frequency identification, QR code (quick response code), EPC (Electronic Product Code) and wireless sensors. The Global Standard One (GSI) system provides a generic, global standard to facilitate the identification of companies and their products, as well as to facilitate the exchange of information between them. Many traceability systems use barcodes and/or RFID tags to store information at different stages of the production chain. Through a web or mobile interface, the information can be consulted by the final consumers of the product.

One of the main concerns of producers with the current traceability system is to guarantee the authenticity of the information, as well as the inefficiency of counterfeit bottles of wine, usually accompanied by false stories about their origin and product processes. Thus, the wine world needs a solution in order to ensure the authenticity and provenance of every bottle of wine offered to the consumer.

In order to meet the objectives of the use case we explain how a value chain traceability system can be designed together with RFID and Wireless Sensors Networks.

Wireless Sensors Networks are distributed in the vineyards to provide weather data and plant, soil, fertiliser and pesticide information, while RFID tokens will be used to record data related to the harvest, decanting, fermentation and preservation process. This architecture allows remote monitoring of the provenance and traceability of the recording of relevant information.

Blockchain is a decentralised and distributed ledger that continuously updates the list of transactions it incorporates, with records of the sensitive data we consider relevant, in such a way that it is computationally impracticable to falsify the data recorded in the transactions. Blockchain allows a transaction to be represented in a system through the use of a block that includes relevant information, such as the block number, the proof of work, the identifier of the previous block and the details of the transaction. This information contained in the block is extended to each of the participants in the value chain consensus environment. The other participants known as the “miners” verify the transaction by validating it and incorporating it into the blockchain, thereby confirming the transaction and producing the transfer of value from one party to the other, as well as its payment in money.

AddVANTE proposes a traceability system based on Blockchain in order to monitor and record in detail the information of the value chain that is relevant from the point of view of both the producer and the end consumer, by means of an immutable and incorruptible database with a time stamp of each of the data composing it.

The traceability that we propose is based on the fact that each of the entities that intervene throughout the production process, such as vine growers, wine producers, bulk distributors, winery forwarders, bottlers, labellers, distributors, wholesalers and retail distributors, are taken into account while defining a traceability system for the product that the end consumer receives.

In order to guarantee the confidentiality of critical information, a public key will be distributed to each of the entities involved in the production process. In addition, each participant will need to generate a pair of keys, one public and one private, prior to the work that corresponds to it in the order of the production process. The public key will be shared with all other participants in order to authenticate the originator of the block by the miners. After receiving the block from the miners, the miners will have to decrypt the encrypted information, as well as verify the identity of the initiator of the transaction before validating the block.

Below, we show you a diagram of how a real application of the traceability of the production process can be developed. In short, each bottle will have a unique identifier that will incorporate all the information from the winegrower to the final retailer. As the block will incorporate the transaction from the production process to the final retailer, it will be impossible for the bottle of wine to be falsified and sold twice.

AddVANTE can help you in the strategic planning of the conception of the design architecture of the blockchain solution that your industry needs in order to obtain, in addition to greater traceability of your product, greater control of the production process with cost savings, and to improve your reputational image in the market.