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Wine Tasting Via Computer
smooth wombat writes "What makes a good wine? Why do some wines have a smooth, almond-like bouquet while others have a sharper, more acidic bite to them? These questions and more have usually been answered by oenologists who can list the subtle nuances of a particular wine and tell you if it's good or not. However, vinters don't have the luxury of waiting until a wine is ready to be drunk to know if they have produced a good, drinkable product. Lorenz "Larry" Biegler, who teaches chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, in conjunction with industry scientists in Chile, is working on mathematical formulas to automate the fermentation process, adjusting ingredients and conditions to ensure robust flavors and higher yields from grape harvests. The researchers have been collaborating for more than two years and are studying only white wines, since reds are more complex and contain solids that make them difficult to analyze."
Another issue with their formula: It implies that "If we add more X to mixture Y, it'll taste better."
When wine tasting, again, is such a subjective thing, even given the fact that they may be able to figure out what gives the wine more of a fruiter aftertaste, for example, they still don't know if they actually WANT a fruiter aftertaste.
Again, if we get the experts deciding what would make the wine taste "better" and then working with the machine to decide what can be done to make the wine taste the way the experts want, we're still only doing something that can probably be done already (IANAWineGeek, BTW) without the aid of an expensive machine. And one expert's "better" might be another expert's "ruined"
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some wines have a smooth, almond-like bouquet
No they dont. Nor do they taste like chocolate, raspberries or broccoli.
Really wine has 5 basic flavorings: 1) rotten grape 2) alcohol 3) wooden barrel 4) cork 5) mold
Not undrinkable, but creating a GOOD wine basically an art. You can't replace a Van Gogh with electronics. I CAN however see this being used to make low-quality cheap wines more consistant and a bit better while still keeping costs down.
The company Enologix already uses a "formula" based on chemical composition to predict wine rating scores. It translates all of that winemaking into one number...one number that matters a lot.
They contract clients who test wine at different times. It tells them how long to ferment, when to stop, if the batch will ferment faster or slower than usual, etc. And of course, in France, how much ethylene glycol to add at the end. They average a 5-6 rating point increase in the first year their clients use them.
To take it even further, I'll use a coffee example. Illy did a LOT of scientific taste testing studies on its coffee (or in the US, espresso). They found the magical chemical formula. Then, they would test each batch, alter the chemical content to become perfect, and sell it.
The Italians were OUTRAGED! It was as bad as cigarette makers adding nicotine to cigarettes!
So what did Illy do? They stopped that process. Now, they draw several batches in parallel. Test all of them. And figure out how to combine them to achieve the magical formula. The end result is chemically the same, but the Italians are happy to know that Illy comes from 100% roasted Arabica beans from Brasil.
Of course winemakers already try to do this with blended wines. But it would be pretty easy if each wine were independently chemically tested, and then the appropriate convex combination were defined to result in a 90+ Wine Spectator rating. And I'm sure many of them do this already.
This might work well for jug wines that no one really drinks for the taste in the first place, but even cheap table wine has subtle (or not-so-subtle) nuances that might be erased by this process.
LCD (lowest common denominator) wine.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
When it comes to rock, I like live music performances better than studio recordings, even if it means hearing a few minor mistakes. A good band never quite plays something the same way twice.
For classical or other instumental works, I like recordings that are somewhat "dirty". I want to be able to hear a bit of a rasp from the bow on the cello strings, so that I can practically smell the rosin dust.
I don't just want to hear sterile, perfect notes. If I did, I'd listen to MIDIs. I like studio chatter. I like improv. Hell, crowd noise is even OK sometimes.
I think that many people have similar feelings about wine.