Selinko, NXP partner for connected wine bottles

Selinko, the Belgian specialist in digital product authentication, and NXP Semiconductors have partnered to provide IoT connectivity to vintners for all wine categories.

The Geantet-Pansiot estate will be the first vineyard in Burgundy to connect its entire production and benefit from IoT authentication, traceability and consumer engagement, starting with its 2015 vintage

Selinko’s platform combined with NXP's Mifare Ultralight C chip enable the estate to safeguard its distribution network in order to protect its wines from counterfeiting, combat gray markets and also to communicate with its customers directly and in a targeted manner. The customers, for their part, can authenticate their bottle and obtain information about the wine (vintage, production, serving temperature, storage) and the estate, simply by tapping the back label with their NFC smartphone.

Selinko CEO Patrick Eischen said: ‘We’re delighted with this collaboration, which represents a real opportunity for vintners to be able to enter a new digital era and gain easier access to an NFC authentication technology with encryption – a type of solution that was previously only used for great vintages.’

Sylvia Kaiser-Kershaw, global segment marketing, RFID-NFC smart consumer products, NXP, added: ‘Selinko offers an innovative and comprehensive solution, well-known in the wines and spirits market. By combining the expertise and innovation of our two companies, we can work together to raise awareness and increase take-up of digital authentication technologies in the wine industry, in order to improve the level of protection compared to existing technologies and to reconnect winegrowers to their customers, in a world that is increasingly becoming connected, mobile and shared.’

The Geantet-Pansiot estate will be the first vineyard in Burgundy to connect its entire production and benefit from IoT authentication, traceability and consumer engagement, starting with its 2015 vintage. This follows its existing adoption of Selinko technology for its great vintages, and will see each bottle equipped with a unique, secure NFC tag from NXP, which can be authenticated using the Selinko mobile app.

By tagging its bottles, Geantet-Pansiot is also accessing a unique gray market detection system involving the distribution network and the customers. The sale of bottles outside their established markets can now be countered using Selinko's platform, which engages the distribution network and the end consumer at the same time using one and the same technology. It does not require any particular investment, apart from an NFC-enabled smartphone, or any specific technical expertise.  

It enables each bottle to be uniformly traced as far as the end customer. Each bottle is initially assigned to a distributor, importer or final customer and to a geographic area dependent thereon. Deviations can be detected and flagged up to the vintner via an online platform. Using an app available on an NFC smartphone, those involved in the Geantet-Pansiot distribution chain will be invited to identify themselves and scan the bottles to ensure proper delivery to their final destination. They will also benefit from useful information about the wines and the estate. The end consumer, by scanning the bottle, will be the final link in this chain of traceability.

Fabien Geantet, owner of the Geantet-Pansiot estate in Gevrey-Chambertin, said: ‘As a passionate winemaker, I feel it is essential to be able to continuously guarantee to my consumers and my customers a level of expertise and quality worthy of a genuine Geantet-Pansiot wine. I was very quickly convinced by the strength of the Selinko platform's multi-service approach, which meets all of my needs with a single technology.’

The connected Geantet-Pansiot bottles will be on sale at the beginning of 2017.