What goes into a great bottle of wine? Sensors, software, and scads of data analysis. Oh, and drones, of course.

One day last fall, a drone lazily circled above Hahn Estate Winery, home to 1,100 acres of grapes in California’s Santa Lucia Highlands.

The drone, a five-pound model airplane, wasn’t there merely to take photos. Fitted with visual and multispectral sensors, it was collecting various kinds of data—information to help Hahn monitor the health of its vineyard and resist the effects of California’s fourth consecutive year of drought.

Winegrowers worry about two things: the quality of their grapes and how many they can produce. By running software algorithms made for monitoring crops, a drone can help the winery determine both. Welcome to the connected agriculture business. Yes, even the Internet of things has gone farm to table.

In November, Hahn volunteered a patch of its vineyard to test the concept. It teamed up with PrecisionHawk, a Raleigh, N.C., company specializing in drones and aerial data analysis, and Verizon VZ 1.22% , which developed an agricultural technology platform to synthesize and analyze crop data. Aerial data from PrecisionHawk’s drone let the winery infer canopy cover, an indicator of crop vigor, while ground sensors installed by Verizon monitored temperature and soil moisture.