Algorithms ate the vintage

When a well-known French Château installed the latest AI climate-predictive system, developed a s a result of the annual Vine to Mind symposium, the owners imagined a bold future: optimal irrigation, perfectly timed harvests and wines that would age like Audrey Hepburn in a time capsule.

The trouble began when the system, having crunched forty years of weather data, terroir metrics and lunar goat rituals, predicted a freakishly rainy summer. The AI barked: 'Harvest in June. Trust the cloud.' Dutifully, the winemakers obeyed. June came. June went, with the serenity of Provence on a postcard. Not a single raindrop. Grapes, confused and still teenagers, had barely hit puberty. The premature harvest yielded little green bullets.

Wine of the week

• Finca Moncloa Traditional 2021

  As red wines from Andalucía gain ground, this prizewinner (Gran Bacchus de Oro) has distinguished itself by being the only red wine from Cadiz to have obtained the award

  From the Gonzalez Byass stable and made with Tintilla de Rota grapes. Around 16 euros

But AI didn't stop there. It recommended switching from traditional barrels to 'sustainable carbon-neutral AI-forged wine spheres', and fermenting at 'optimal bio-rhythmic frequencies'. The result? A wine that tasted of fermented battery acid with a nostalgic hint of printer ink.

Critics were savage. The Guía Peñín declared it 'a bold reinterpretation of wine as a concept, hopefully never repeated'. The château's owner was last seen re-reading Virgil and muttering, 'The Romans just looked at the sky'. In the end, nature had the last laugh. September was glorious, sun-drenched, perfect. Meanwhile, the château's robot sommelier resigned, citing 'irreconcilable taste differences'. The vineyard has since returned to traditional methods, guided by the instincts of a 76-year-old farmer named Claude and his cow, Brigitte - neither of whom have ever heard of algorithms, but both of whom know when it's going to rain.