The wine industry is valued at over $300bn, with wine grapes among the most profitable crops in the world. Nonetheless, like much of agriculture, viticulture is often perceived as somewhat anachronistic.
“The wine industry is very traditional,” says Guillaume de Pracomtal, a wine-industry veteran and founding partner of Xinomavro Ventures. “The way people grow grapes and make wine has changed very little over centuries. Yes, there’s been innovation. But it’s been marginal, not disruptive.”
De Pracomtal spent 11 years as CEO of Canton Cooperage, a supplier of oak barrels in Napa Valley, before joining forces with fellow wine expert Greg Letort to set up Xinomavro — a specialist investment fund focused on bringing new technologies into the wine industry.
It remains the only fund focused specifically on winemaking, he says. Or at least, “the only one doing it with a global reach and a real Silicon Valley VC mentality.”
“We have Silicon Valley KPIs. We invest in technologies we think are going to be exponential and deliver great returns, but also solve big problems,” he notes. “There’s another fund doing it, but just in France and without the same sort of Silicon Valley VC ethos.”
Why wine has lagged behind in tech adoption
De Pracomtal and Letort launched Xinomavro in 2023 after recognising a widespread need for technical evolution across the sector. “Viticulture is one of the least digitised segments in agriculture, and I could see a lot of players lagging in terms of tech adoption,” he explains from his home in France.
For him, the reasons are complex. While the wine industry is not constrained by a lack of capital — unlike many other agricultural sectors — growers have often felt little urgency to innovate, as wine has enjoyed comfortable, sustained growth over the past 30 years. Another factor, he adds, is that vineyard owners have historically preferred to invest in things they know, such as land and brands.
However, with vineyards now suffering from challenges such as water scarcity, soil erosion, and labour shortages — issues affecting agriculture broadly — this attitude is beginning to shift.
Vineyards as a testbed for agricultural innovation
In fact, de Pracomtal argues that vineyards are experiencing many of these pressures even more acutely than other farms. But Xinomavro is founded on the belief that if vineyards sit at the heart of the problem, they might also sit at the heart of the solution. “We see wine as an entry point for broader agriculture.”
The primary reason, he says, is that grapes are among the highest-value crops per tonne, meaning farmers can afford to spend slightly more testing new technologies. The second reason is that winemaking is a remarkably uniform global industry. Unlike row crops, where production methods vary widely between regions, “you can take a winemaker from Australia, send them to France, or take someone from France and send them to Chile, and they’ll all be able to do their work on day one.”
“This means you can scale innovations to other countries more easily.”
Portfolio strategy: Solving pain points, not just funding tech
Many of the start-ups in Xinomavro’s portfolio are therefore not strictly tied to wine, but see it as a practical proving ground before expanding into other agricultural sectors.
“Vineyards are a bit of a canary in the coal mine for agriculture as a whole,” he says, pointing to pesticides as an example: vineyards are among the highest users. The rise in organic wines arguably reflects growing public concern about chemical exposure.
Xinomavro’s latest investment is Saga Robotics, a company aiming to cut fungicide use by deploying UV lights on autonomous robots. RootWave, similarly, is a UK-based company developing machines that kill weeds with electricity rather than herbicides.
“The founders of those two start-ups don’t come from the wine world, but they started with vineyards because the pesticide issue is most pressing there.”
RootWave and Saga Robotics are among 13 companies across seven countries to receive investment from Xinomavro.
The fund’s “sweet spot” is between €400,000 and €500,000 for initial investments, with additional capital reserved for follow-ons, says de Pracomtal. He notes, however, that Xinomavro is not yet “a fully-fledged VC” as it does not have fully committed funds. “But we’ve got over 50 investors and pockets of money that we can tap into.”
Scaling beyond wine
Like most agtech investors, Xinomavro backs start-ups with highly advanced technologies. But de Pracomtal stresses that he and Letort are not scientists. “We’re operators.”
That means the pair focus less on the technical minutiae and more on each start-up’s business model — whether it solves a major industry problem, be it in viticulture (de Pracomtal’s area) or the consumer segment (Letort’s expertise).
“We know all the players and the lay of the land, so if a start-up really addresses one of the industry’s pain points, we know how to help them scale,” he says. “That’s how we bring value. People view us as specialists.”