For those active in the web3 space in Singapore, Chilean winery Pengwine is a well-known brand that has sponsored several nonfungible token (NFT) and metaverse events over the past year. It is helmed by sommelier, winemaker, entrepreneur and author Chris Milliken. 

An American born chef, Milliken’s career is the culmination of serendipitous moments spanning several countries. His introduction to the wine industry was the result of “following a woman to Chile” (now his wife of 23 years). His philosophy for life is simple, “I love food. I love wine. I love marketing. I love storytelling. I love connecting people. I think that what really fascinates me in life is connecting dots to see how people make connections, how products make connections to people, how people make connections to products.” Milliken has been connecting these dots his entire career. And he views technology as a catalyst. 

The last time I bumped into him was in May at Vinexpo Asia in Singapore. This leading international wine and spirit expo attracted 1,000 global wine exhibitors from every major wine region. I had decided to head to the event to chat to wineries about what future technologies they were adopting in this highly competitive and ever-evolving consumer market. I was not expecting to be met with blank stares and quizzical looks at the mention of blockchain, the metaverse and artificial intelligence (AI).

In this massive venue, I only found one exhibitor that had developed an AI quiz to match customer flavor profiles to their wines, so as to offer a bespoke tasting experience. It was at the booth of this Italian exhibitor that I bumped into Milliken. I left the expo tipsy and disappointed, yet with a promise from Chris that we would chat further about this seeming lack of blockchain technology adoption in the wine industry. 

Milliken is somewhat of an enigma in the global wine industry - an early adopter and experimenter with blockchain technology. When first introduced to blockchain in 2016, he saw it as a solution to tracking and tracing his Pengwine exports.

“I saw an incredible amount of falsely labelled wines in the Asian market especially,” he said to me recently. “They were doing great reproductions, from the bottle to the label to the casing, the storytelling, everything was just being duplicated. And I was shocked when I found out that our wines weren't only being copied in Asia, but also in Europe.”  In response, “we made every bottle of Pengwine an NFT. Now at that time, we didn't even know to call it an NFT. We just wanted to be able to track and trace the bottles. We had a smart contract that proved the authenticity of every bottle.” 

He became a blockchain evangelist, building and experimenting with technologies to help the wineries curtail the fake wine trade and help consumers know their wines were authentic. However, he soon realized he was banging his head against a proverbial brick wall. 

From the mass consumer market, provenance proved not to be enough of a hook in the purchasing decision to warrant a huge investment in blockchain technology. So Pengwine, which he founded in 2004, turned to other emerging technologies for customer engagement and loyalty. Pengwine experimented with augmented reality wine labels, yet found the user experience was clunky and confusing, requiring too many steps with a mobile phone to achieve the desired effect. 

“Of the approximately 500,000 wine labels available, how many do you get to choose from by the time you sit down at a restaurant? Maybe 20. The number one selling wine in the world is the same wine on every wine list. It’s the second cheapest. The second cheapest wine is going to outsell everything else. Why? That’s where people feel comfortable. It’s perceived as better than the cheapest. And most people don’t feel comfortable enough ordering something else.”

— Chris Milliken

"It's not so dissimilar to virtual reality where people expected these technologies to take off but they just haven't taken off the way we thought that they would,” he said.  

As for the wine industry, Milliken is frank.  

"Who do you think controls a lot of those fake wines that are in the industry? The wine industry. It's not like other industries are out there making wine for the fake wine industry. There's a lot of big players in the industry that do not want wineries to be able to prove in a scalable, economic way where the wines come from. They are making too much money, and they're profiting too much off of this fake wine market,” he said. “So that was a real eye opener. I was trying to build a solution for an industry that really doesn't want a solution." 

AI will speed up web3 adoption

Seven years on, Milliken is introspective. "Right now, I'm really watching how blockchain is impacting people's day-to-day lives and looking at the projects that other people are doing. I've learned from my mistakes. And now I think it's time to learn from other people's mistakes as well, because we were so far ahead, I'm seeing people go out there and try to do very similar things right now. And they're running into the same identical pain points that we had six or seven years ago. Which says to me that the technology hasn't advanced as much as we think, because the problems are still there."

Milliken is excited by AI, and feels that ultimately, it will converge with web3 and speed up mass adoption. He sees AI as “finally making a lot of these things more scalable, faster, generating a better customer experience. And that comes from education and understanding, especially with wine,” Milliken said. 

“We know AI cannot taste wine. But it can very quickly and easily create massive databases with winery data, tasting notes, consumer feedback, chef thoughts, all these things. And I believe it's going to create a much more active, accurate description to the consumer for what the consumer is looking for in a wine.” 

We are going to be gamified in ways we don't even understand yet. 

Milliken is passionate about NFTs and the utility that can be built into them to elevate consumer engagement and loyalty. He believes that there is a huge untapped opportunity to truly merge real life experiences and the enjoyment of wine with blockchain technology. He said, “by gamifying and keeping consumers engaged we can say, ‘yes, here's the second cheapest wine, but the third and fourth cheapest wines are going to reward you back with something. So maybe you will choose that one over the one before.” He feels that if boutique wineries like Pengwine can be thinking of gamification and rewards in this context, there is a way for them to carve out a sustainable and loyal customer base in such a highly competitive market. 

As he well knows, it’s all a matter of connecting the dots. “The more passionate we are about certain things, the more we're going to be involved with those things, and the more we're going to want to be rewarded,” he said. “These are the solutions we need to be building for the wine industry."