If you are evaluating winery automation, you will run into two very different product families: dedicated control systems (Acrolon TankNet, VinWizard, Parsec) and software layers that sit on top of your existing equipment, which is the category of Cepaos Connected Winery. They do not compete on everything — and picking the wrong one is expensive. Here is the honest comparison.
What dedicated systems do (very well)
Let's be clear up front: Acrolon, VinWizard and Parsec build excellent hardware and process control. They have decades in wineries worldwide, and on their home turf they are the reference.
- Acrolon TankNet is the de-facto standard for tank temperature control in North America: per-tank controllers, valves, fermentation profiles, alarms. Robust and proven.
- VinWizard (New Zealand) offers full plant control: temperature, agitation, refrigeration management with energy optimization, zone panels.
- Parsec (Italy) leads in fermentation control and micro-oxygenation: their injection systems and probes are among the finest tools in precision oenology.
All three sell their own hardware with their own control software. That is their model: you install their controllers, their valves, their panels, and you get a closed, reliable control loop built for process.
If your problem is "I need precision temperature control across 200 tanks with refrigeration energy optimization", a dedicated system is a serious answer and probably the right one.
Where a dedicated system stops
The limit shows up when you step back from the control loop and look at the whole winery operation:
- It is an island. The dedicated system knows "tank 12 is at 14 °C" and "the pump started at 14:30". It does not know which wine is in tank 12, which batch it belongs to, or that the transfer had to be booked in the cellar records. The record for the winemaker and the regulator still gets written by hand, in another system.
- Proprietary hardware. The value is tied to installing their controllers. If your press, chiller and bottling line already have their own PLCs, replacing or duplicating that control means engineering, wiring and capital.
- Partial equipment coverage. They specialize in tanks and refrigeration. The bench scale, the labeler, the weather station and vineyard irrigation stay outside the system.
What Cepaos Connected Winery does differently
Connected Winery starts from the opposite assumption: your equipment already knows how to work; what is missing is a connection to your management system.
- It reads what every machine does (when it starts, how much it processed) through whatever the machine already offers: the manufacturer's API, Modbus/OPC-UA against the existing PLC, or a minimal relay + flow-meter retrofit. Five integration tiers (A-E), down to manual logging: no machine stays out of the book.
- It commands operations — pump X litres with flow-meter cut-off, start the line, change the chiller setpoint — with two-person safety: dual approval, QR-verified physical presence, and the plant E-stop always overriding any remote command.
- Every operation lands in the cellar book. This is the real differentiator: the commanded transfer is booked as a movement of the correct batch, consumables are decremented, and the data is ready for your regulator's records. With a dedicated system, you write that entry yourself, afterwards, by hand.
The cost model is different too: as a software layer on the hardware you already own, activating Connected Winery typically costs 5 to 10 times less than a dedicated automation project with proprietary hardware, installation and commissioning. Not magic — we simply do not sell you new controllers for machines that already have their own.
Head to head
| Dedicated systems (Acrolon / VinWizard / Parsec) | Cepaos Connected Winery | |
|---|---|---|
| Fine process control (ramps, PID, micro-ox) | ⭐ Excellent, their specialty | Delegated to the existing PLC/controller |
| Hardware | Their own, proprietary | Yours; minimal retrofit if needed |
| Equipment coverage | Mostly tanks and refrigeration | 18 types, from bench scale to irrigation |
| Cellar book / compliance records | Manual, in another system | Automatic, integrated |
| Batch traceability per operation | Does not know the batch | Every command tied to the batch |
| Command safety | Local control loop | Dual approval + QR + flow-meter cut-off, E-stop always wins |
| Typical project cost | Capital + installation | Monthly software add-on, 5-10× less |
When to choose which
Choose a dedicated system if: your bottleneck is process control itself — hundreds of tanks without temperature control, fine fermentation profiles, refrigeration energy optimization. There, dedicated hardware pays for itself.
Choose Connected Winery if: your equipment already works and the problem is that operations live in silos — records are written by hand, nobody knows which batch each pump moved, and you want to command and trace without replacing anything. It is also the natural next step if you already run read-only IoT monitoring and want to move up to commanding.
Both? It happens, and it works: the dedicated system runs tank refrigeration, and Cepaos reads it and books everything else into the cellar records. They are not mutually exclusive.