Snapshot
Baia’s Wine, a leading producer of organic wines in Georgia, sought a solution to demonstrate the detailed history of its award-winning organic wines. They want a way to distinguish themselves from competitors by digitally communicating their product’s superior quality via the wine’s product label. Doing that meant documenting each bottle’s origin history and making those details traceable on a mobile landing page that’s easily accessible for consumer engagement. All of this information could be stored immutably on a blockchain to give consumers assurances in the product history data.
The Cardano Metadata Connector is jointly developed by Scantrust, a connected goods and products platform, and the Cardano Foundation. The Cardano Metadata Connecter was integral to making this possible. Additionally, enabling end-to-end authentication, data transparency, and instant third-party verification of Baia’s Wine product origin with QR codes on product labels. Through the Cardano blockchain, the supply chain data for Baia’s Wine remains publicly verifiable.
Bottles tagged with Scantrust secured QR codes that link to Cardano blockchain data are shipping to almost a dozen countries. The secured QR codes are scanned to generate thousands of valuable data points for Baia’s Wine.
INTRODUCTION
Spanning three generations of winemakers, Baia’s Wine nestles in the rolling hills of the Lesser Caucasus in the Imereti region of Western Georgia. Producing award-winning organic wines, the vineyard is run by two sisters Baia and Gvantsa Abuladze, together with their brother Giorgi. The elder sister, Baia, is a recipient of the coveted Forbes 30 under 30 in Europe. The family continues an 8,000-year-old Georgian winemaking tradition. In addition to their Georgian customers, Baia’s Wine exports to 12 international markets.
Managing this complex supply chain is a manually intensive process. Until now, it lacked a satisfying and modern way to connect with the end consumers. Consumers who ultimately enjoy Baia’s Wine products. Using the Cardano-Scantrust Metadata Connector, Baia’s Wine increases trust and product transparency, which opens a direct communication channel with their end-consumers through the wine bottles themselves.
THE CHALLENGE
Premium quality lies at the heart of Baia’s Wine philosophy. Their wines are made from organic ingredients with a production process focused on environmental sustainability. Native, traditional Georgian grape varieties Tsitska, Tsolikouri, and Krakhuna, are renowned worldwide in the viticulture industry. They are the source of the unique Baia’s Wine flavors. The vineyard follows traditions honed over three generations, using care to ensure the premium quality of its wine. The result is a premium wine exemplifying the geographically unique region of Georgia. Attention to detail in their production results in the vineyard winning prestigious awards, including the Düsseldorf Wine Grand Prix.
Despite having an indisputably desirable product, Baia’s Wine lacked the latest technology, methods, and experience to sufficiently communicate the superior qualities and painstaking effort that goes into making their wines. Once bottles of wine left the winery on their way to buyers, Baia’s Wine had no way to track the bottles. That meant there was no mechanism for connecting with the end-consumer. Consumers buying Baia’s Wine products had no knowledge of the laborious and special history behind each bottle.
That was clearly a missed opportunity. Counterfeiting was also a risk, which cost the wine industry billions of dollars while endangering consumers. The potential to solve all of these problems convinces Baia’s Wine to use the Cardano-Scantrust pioneering innovation. This is the introduction of a first-of-its-kind proof-of-concept project to the Georgian wine industry.
There is so much deep history behind our wines that consumers never get to see. We have long been investigating ways we can communicate our wine’s superior quality and unique Georgian grape varieties to consumers. Through our partnership with Scantrust and the Cardano Foundation, we have found an innovative, effective method.
Baia Abuladze,
Owner, Baia’s Wine
THE SCANTRUST SOLUTION: SECURED QR CODES
Tamper-proof labels with Scantrust secured QR codes were applied to Baia’s Wine 2020 vintage bottles at their bottling facility in Georgia. Secured QR codes are then linked to data points; that includes the wines’ production history, such as the date and location of crushing, fermentation, and other production tasks. Those data points were subsequently anchored to the Cardano blockchain using transactional metadata for a complete supply chain record. The secure record of the supply chain data includes a hash of the original data, a pointer to where the data is stored, the digital identity of the supply chain actors, and digital signatures for verification.
When consumers scan these QR codes with a smartphone, they are directed to a mobile landing page that shows the entire history of the wine in a user-friendly interface. All of the original data associated with the bottle, including the metadata transaction on the Cardano network, is available for review for anyone to verify that Baia’s Wine indeed generated the unaltered data. The Scantrust mobile app used to authenticate secured QR codes confirms that the codes are genuine, preventing counterfeiting activity and potentially sending alerts triggered by suspicious activity to Baia’s Wine. Every scan of a wine bottle and its secured QR code gives Baia’s Wine insight into the behavior of its consumers.
RESULTS
Through this proof-of-concept, Baia’s Wine can create a digital connection with thousands of consumers around the globe and deliver detailed origin information about their unique product story. In the process, they generate valuable consumer persona data where they previously had no visibility once the bottles left the vineyard.
Our proof-of-concept with Baia’s Wine and Scantrust is the first implementation of transactional metadata on Cardano. It proves how blockchain can enable supply chain traceability and transparency.
Frederik Gregaard,
CEO, Cardano Foundation
Using Cardano transactional metadata, the entire origin history of the wine is securely anchored in a public blockchain at a fraction of the cost of comparable alternatives. Beyond providing a secure record of the supply chain data, the Cardano-Scantrust Metadata Connector also identifies each actor involved in the data collection process with authenticity verification of the producer and third parties along the supply chain. By incorporating an open data policy with Scantrust, any third party can easily check if the supply chain has been tampered with, creating additional value to end consumers and reinforcing the strength of the Baia’s Wine brand.
This rich tapestry of data brings visibility and transparency to an artisan industry spanning many millennia of Georgian winemakers. The resulting ‘proof-of-wine’ is an exciting and unique marriage of tradition and technology. And it is made possible by the Cardano-Scantrust Metadata Connector.
Since the implementation of secured QR codes on their wine bottles, Baia’s Wine underwent a 15% increase in sales and total wine production, while opening and reaching several untapped markets in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. 10% of the products have been scanned in almost 20 different countries, which is significantly higher than scan rates for comparable projects.
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