(9 Sep 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Yountville, California – 4 September 2025
1. Various harvesting wine grapes
2. Various autonomous tractor operates in vineyard
+++SOUNDBITE PARTIALLY COVERED+++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Tom Gamble, Owner, Gamble Estates:
"We have seen a great deal of change, and I think the pace of technological change is accelerating.
We’re using the electric mode of the tractor. It has both a row follow, meaning it can be driver occupied, but the driver is not actually doing the steering. In the future, as we map vineyard by vineyard, it will be able to drive itself and completely function autonomously. It’ll get to the end of the row and turn around and come back around. It’s actually less of a complex operation than, say, a Waymo in San Francisco."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Napa, California – 4 September 2025
4. Starting up Scout app on smartphone attached to ATV
5. Various riding up and down vineyard rows taking images of vines using attached cameras
6. Various captured Scout vineyard images examined on laptop
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7. SOUNDBITE (English) Kia Behnia, Co-Founder & CEO, Scout:
"So how Scout works is very simple. We attach these ordinary cameras to any tractor, a TV, or even a backpack, or in the future it may be robots. Those cameras capture plant photos using a smartphone. The data then gets uploaded to our cloud. Analyze those photos for problems, for measurements, for patterns, for counts."
+++SOUNDBITE PARTIALLY COVERED+++
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Mireia Domenech, Viticulturist, Enterprise Vineyards:
"And one of the most important things for us is knowing what’s gonna be the yield ahead of time for preparation, both for the winery and for the crews that are picking. So it’s super important for us to have this discussion ahead of time. And having a tool that is capable of seeing every cluster and having an accurate assessment of what’s gonna be our yield would really help."
9. Various ATV riding through rows of vineyard
+++SOUNDBITE PARTIALLY COVERED+++
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Kia Behnia, Co-Founder & CEO, Scout:
"A lot of our farmers are smart as they are. AI gives them a superpower, so they can be smarter in the decisions they make because they have the right data to make those decisions."
11. Various tractor with Scout cameras drives through vineyard
STORYLINE:
Tom Gamble is not just a Napa Valley winemaker. He’s a forward thinker.
When artificial intelligence-powered tractors hit the market, Gamble saw potential, investing early in a self-driving model to bring precision farming to his family’s historic vineyard.
The electric powered tractor has learned every row of Gamble’s vineyard.
Soon, it’ll operate autonomously, optimizing crop care and helping to reduce water and chemical use.
For farmers like Gamble, it’s about sustainability and economics, using less fuel, cutting pollution, and complying with growing regulations.
AI is also proving especially useful for crop health monitoring, using cameras and smartphones attached to farm vehicles to identify diseases before they wipe out entire harvests, and to determine just how many grapes winemakers can expect from a vineyard.
Those early insights can determine everything from how many workers to hire to how many bottle to buy.
Other growers are using AI by automating irrigation valves that detect leaks and shut off water automatically.
While some farmers remain cautious, experts say the wine industry is a strong example of how AI can support, not replace, skilled labor.
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