Waste from Manual Sampling in Fermentation Monitoring

Direct loss from wine physically removed as samples plus higher intervention costs and quality downgrades that push wine from premium restaurant programs into lower-margin channels, easily $10,000–$40,000 per year for a medium winery; larger operations can see substantially greater losses. • Direct revenue loss from reduced order sizes, discounts or credits to appease corporate clients, and missed repeat-event business; typical impact ranges from $5,000–$25,000 per year, with potential for larger hits when major events are affected. • Lost revenue from cancelled or downgraded club shipments, discounts offered as appeasement, and lifetime value erosion of high-value club members; easily $10,000–$30,000 per year for a mid-sized club program.

Creates event allocation plans in spreadsheets based on estimated finished volumes, assuming historical average losses and not explicitly accounting for batch-specific sample draw or quality loss from late fermentation corrections. • Draws manual samples from tanks into beakers, walks them to the lab, runs bench-top instruments, and records results on paper or in lab notebooks before selectively re-entering values into Excel or basic LIMS-style spreadsheets used for quality tracking. • Exports planned finished volumes into spreadsheets and updates online marketplace listings manually, using rough loss assumptions during fermentation rather than precise, sensor-based tank data that includes sampling and intervention-related losses.