About us

A professional team hooked on satellite data, artificial intelligence and, obviously, good wine.
Time line

Saturnalia Story

From the intuitive spark to the platform, step by step. 

2016

ESA Space Camp APP

Saturnalia project manager, Daniele De Vecchi, together with his team conceives the first ambitious idea of Saturnalia at the Space Camp App organised by the European Space Agency. Saturnalia is among the winning projects.

Saturnalia and Ticinum Aerospace

Saturnalia becomes the new innovative service provided by the Italian start-up Ticinum Aerospace. The first stage of planning begins.

2017

2018

ESA shows its support

The Saturnalia project begins to take form: it receives two grants, first by the Kick Start Activity promoted by the European Space Agency and again by the Copernicus Incubation Programme.

A new ESA grant

Saturnalia keeps receiving praise from the European Space Agency which decides to put its trust in the team once again and bring additional grants to support the development of a new platform completely designed for fine wines.

2020

2020

Launch of the platform

On November 26 the new Saturnalia platform collecting all quality and price analyses and predictions for an initial pool of fine wines is officially launched. During the next month the function “World Map” is implemented, so that the world’s most famous vineyards can be viewed and observed in 3D.

Today and next steps

Today the platform counts more than 3500 fine wines and 5+ million km² of 3D vineyards selected from Old & New World top wine regions.
Saturnalia Vintage Scores for Bordeaux first-growth wines are now present on Liv-ex platform. Saturnalia achieved additional partnerships with international players such as WiV, UK merchant JF Tobias, Vindome and Vint. It raised the interest among general and fine wine specialised media in an objective method of grape quality evaluation. The Saturnalia model of grape quality prediction will soon be on the launch pad and ready to be applied to all bottled wines.

Next

We work and dream together to make Saturnalia the first digital atlas capable of displaying in 3D the most renowned vineyards
vision & Mission

From space to vineyard

Through Saturnalia we leverage artificial intelligence applied to satellite data to provide the fine wine world with objective information and predictions of price and quality.

With Saturnalia we aim to build the first dynamic atlas in 3D, capable of providing every useful information to know a fine wine in every nuance: from the territory of origin to quality analyses, from price trends to weather data. We work every day to get closer to our dream: to map every most renowned vineyard in the world.

Our team core is rooted into an academic past, during which the analysis and elaboration of satellite data have always been an everyday occurrence. We apply the scientific method to the world of the most valuable wines to offer objective, quickly accessible and easily exploitable information.  Our perspective comes from space, it successively mingles with Earth through the best viticultural areas and ultimately allows us to elaborate precious data for every lover and professional who wish to know all about fine wines.

When support comes from Space

As an En Primeur investor, grape quality is the decisive factor for me. In a vintage like Bordeaux 2020, with a record drought and record precipitation in a single season, no source of information is superior to Saturnalia. Saturnalia offers a fact based judgement on each producer, eliminating marketing noise and subjective opinions. In an age when nearly every wine critic awards 90 plus points to nearly anyone, Saturnalia shows the wide range of quality across both producers and vintages in a single side-by-side comparison. Another feature I like is that Saturnalia keeps an eye on my wine collection. It helps me detect if the market price of a particular wine shoots above its quality level or if a wine hits maturity. This saves a ton of time and greatly protects the value of my collection.

Martin V. Customer, Czech Republic

Since we have partnered with Saturnalia and decided to integrate their data on our app, our clients have been able to make more informed decisions on their purchases and discover more details about their favourite wines.

Mario Colesanti Head of Sales & Marketing, Vindome, Monaco

We decided to leverage Saturnalia satellite-derived data for our annual vintage report on the Bordeaux En Primeur. The result was impressive, as the 2020 report reached a level of detail that could not have been achieved without Saturnalia: our clients could benefit from every kind of insight on the weather, and its impact on the growing season.

Jake Leighton Head of Investment , JF Tobias, UK

    Saturnalia Team

    Daniele
    De Vecchi

    project manager

    5+ years in remote sensing applied to agriculture. Technology, travelling and running are his passions; to leave a mark his purpose.

    Gianni Cristian Iannelli

    ceo

    10+ years as aerospace researcher and entrepreneur. An enthusiast of AI, innovation and travelling.

    Fabio
    Dell'Acqua

    Scientific director

    Professor of remote sensing at the University of Pavia. His teaching never foregoes passion; his research thrives on years of experience.

    Daniel Aurelio Galeazzo

    IT Senior Architect

    10+ years as a programmer in the aerospace field. Clustering and big data on one side, and guitar on the other, make up his passions.

    Nicolò Ramaioli

    DevOps and full stack developer

    Front end and web backend developer. Automation and efficiency are always present in his life. 

    Serena Balbo

    Junior Digital Marketing Specialist

    Her passions are foreign languages and digital marketing. She never misses out on a good hiking trip.

    Gianni Lisini

    Hardware specialist

    Never fails to put passion in designing hardware prototypes based on microcontrollers and data transfer systems relying on wireless IoT.

    Javier I.
    Santtiz Jara

    Senior AI Developer

    A deep learning programmer at the service of AI by day; a omnivorous reader of mangas and papers by night. 

    Daniele Mainardi

    Junior AI / Software Developer

    A Python programmer at the service of AI. Practical, rational and always takes a chance to improve.

    Saturnalia Advisory Board

    Cathy Huyghe photo

    Cathy Huyghe

    Wine Journalist

    Cathy Huyghe is an award-winning journalist and entrepreneur. She co-founded Enolytics, a big data analytics firm dedicated to the wine and spirits industry, and she writes for Forbes about the business and politics of the wine world. 

    Donal Collins

    financial services executive

    Donal Collins is a senior financial services executive with extensive experience of strategy development and implementation, M&A, Capital Markets and corporate governance.

    Nick Martin photo

    Nick Martin

    Co-founder and CEO of Wine Owners

    Co-founder and CEO of Wine Owners, an industry leader in software as a service (SaaS), Nick’s career encompassed technology research, information publishing, and enterprise-level technology for marketing.

    Try Saturnalia

    Our scientific approach

    If you would like to explore fine wines from an innovative and scientific perspective, brought forward by a team of AI experts and dreamers, you cannot miss Saturnalia: 7 days to try out our platform for free and experience first-hand the whole potential of data analysis applied to the world of top-quality wines.

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