Columbia Crest: World's First Crowdsourced Wine

Columbia Crest is in the process of becoming the first winery to "crowdsource" a wine from the vineyard to the table. The project launched in June of 2014 when fans online were invited to become virtual winemakers. Cole & Weber and Hammerquist Studios teamed up to execute the idea. From Hammerquist Studios: "The idea is that virtual winemakers would vote on how the grapes would be grown. First, we needed to figure out how to get images and weather data from the actual vines. So we did what vineyards back in the 18th century did: we installed wireless cameras and a solar weather station using cell-based internet to capture content. Then, we built a site on Expression Engine and a Javascript toolset to create time-lapse videos on the fly. Next we used the Weather Underground’s API to grab real time weather and forecast data and of course we hooked into YouTube’s API to host all the video. Simple, really. Like stomping grapes."