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Software Science

Wine Tasting Via Computer 136

Posted by Zonk from the snoots-replaced-by-technology dept.
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."
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Wine Tasting Via Computer More

Wine Tasting Via Computer

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  • Ouch (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Kelz ( 611260 )
    Victory Wine anyone? I don't see any wine enthusiasts buying into this.
    • This will still be made with the same grapes, the same yeast, and the same assorted-other-stuff as regular wine. Why would adjusting the precise amounts/times/temperatures with the aid of a computer somehow render it undrinkable?

      • Re:Ouch (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Kelz ( 611260 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:13PM (#14368251)
        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.
        • You can't replace a Van Gogh with electronics.

          Yes, but a pretty picture and a Photoshop filter = Andy Warhol...

        • "Not undrinkable, but creating a GOOD wine basically an art. You can't replace a Van Gogh with electronics."

          Well, I hate to bring the bad news:

          http://www.allersoft.com/vangogh.htm [allersoft.com]

          "Van Gogh is a fully automated painting system that lets you create paintings from your photos..."
          • Not sure if that was ment to be a joke or not, extreme technoloving or just ignorant, at any rate that thing is basicly a variation of a median filter, and some extra stuff for the animation screensaver, not much Van Gogh about it. Although I must say, well I think its likely that computers can help in winemaking like in most other places, just full automation isn't perhaps the way ... yet at least.
            • "Not sure if that was ment to be a joke or not, extreme technoloving or just ignorant"

              Then I guess it wasn't funny enough. I laughed though. Will get me through the day.

        • You know, there are some damn good cheap wines and some bloody awful expensive wines.

          Me, I stick to the <$10 stuff. Same percentage of quality at a much better economny.
        • To extend your metaphor, it seems clear to me that the way to think about this class of technologies is to look at it as a better paintbrush rather than as a replacement for the painter. See, improving tools - or in this case predictive maturation algorithms - almost never negatively impacts the art associated with the creation process. Anything that can provide additional information to the oenologist should only increase the quality of the creation process in my opinion.

    • Re:Ouch (Score:3, Informative)

      by ToasterofDOOM ( 878240 )
      IIRC, it was Victory Gin actually, but I see where you are coming from (Yes, I did have to flaunt my interest in Orwellian literature =D) (And I have lots of karma to burn)
    • Just as long as they don't start analyzing crap like the stuff at http://www.bumwine.com./ [www.bumwine.com] How are they honestly picking which wines to analyze?

  • Seeing if the wine is "Ready"? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ruff_ilb ( 769396 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @08:58PM (#14368179) Homepage
    Wine tasting, as I'm sure most experts will agree, is as much of an art as anything; I doubt that people will allow a computer to tell them if a wine is "good" or not, even if it's right most of the time.

    OTOH, if the computer only tells people if the wine is drinkable, or ready to be tasted, that's a different story. As long as the computer doesn't try to encroach on the "art" side of wine tasting and stays firmly on the "science" side, I think that it could be quite a useful invention - although to a tiny demographic.

    • Re:Seeing if the wine is "Ready"? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by shawb ( 16347 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:06PM (#14368217)
      Or if the computer could tell the vintner subtle variations in temperature or other factors during the fermentation process which would help improve the wine. Maybe evnetually the computer could help determine which woods would be the best for storing a certain batch. Computers wouldn't really be able to help a bad winemaker make good wine, but they could help a good winemaker make better wine.

    • Re:Seeing if the wine is "Ready"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ruff_ilb ( 769396 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:08PM (#14368225) Homepage
      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"
      • Sure the computer knows if a fruity aftertaste is desired -- it's called a configuration parameter. And while the humans know the desired results, they may not have the observational ability to guide it there.

        A basic machine learning approach would go as follows:
        * prepare several batches in slightly different ways
        * measure everything imaginable at various stages of the growing and vinting process
        * when the wine is ready, ask experts to rate values like "fruity aftertaste" and "body strength"
        * throw all the
    • Wine tasting, as I'm sure most WINE SNOBS will agree, is as much of an art as anything; I doubt that WINE SNOBS will allow a computer to tell them if a wine is "good" or not, even if it's right most of the time.

      If I think the wine is good, I'll drink it. I don't care if someone or something agrees with me or not.
      • I doubt that WINE SNOBS will allow a computer to tell them if a wine is "good" or not, even if it's right most of the time. If I think the wine is good, I'll drink it. I don't care if someone or something agrees with me or not.

        Yeah, I hear ya, bro. Gotta love a fresh chilled flask of MD-20, those dudes know how to brew up a decent vin rosy!

    • Re:Seeing if the wine is "Ready"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by blakestah ( 91866 ) <blakestah@gmail.com> on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:28PM (#14368304) Homepage
      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.

      • I read about Enologix in Forbes. They have a model of Robert Parker's taste and can predict how Parker would rate a wine within a few points.
      • And of course, in France, how much ethylene glycol to add at the end.

        You have any references that indicate this is common practice? As far as I know, according to the INAO rules and the EU food safety directives, adding ethylene glycol is flat out illegal. At the very least AOC rated wines will not contain ethylene glycol, as this might cost the vintners their AOC rating.

        Mart
        • ALL wines contain ethylene glycol in testable quantities. Probably a natural source.

          There is famous Austrian wine scandal from 1985 in which the vintners added ethylene glycol to their wines.

          There is a Simpsons episode in which Bart is an exchange student to France and they have him work hard labor making wine and adding ethylene glycol to the wines. He turns them in and is a big hero.

          The French love the Simpsons.

          Mes couilles!

    • I completely agree. Since the machine is only on white wine so far I see that they are having difficulties with reds. I'm going to consider port a step beyond red and hope I'm long dead and gone before a machine tells me what a good port tastes like.

      If they develop this, wine enthusiasts will just pay more for wine judged by humans.

      • why does it matter how it was made or who/what the wine was judged by if it tastes just as good? in the end aren't you just drinking it for the flavor? or is this some kind of image thing?
        • Why? I'm not really sure, but for those of us that buy wine as an investment and not only for consumption the person who rates a wine and the rating they give it matters a lot. If Robert Parker declares a wine to be of a superior standard the value of that wine jumps considerably.

          So no, we aren't just drinking it for the flavor, often times we are storing it for the investment.

    • the "art" side of wine tasting

      Calvin Trillin, a food writer, wrote an interesting column on wine tasting a couple of years ago. There may not be much to it:

      http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020819fa_fa ct [newyorker.com]

    • Chemical analysis of wine flavors is (and has been for several years) used mostly to determine how to process the grape juices to get a certain flavor, not if the wine is drinkable. Manipulating grapes according to these computer-derived formulas has increased the ratings - and thus popularity - of a lot of California wines by allowing the creation of wines custom-tailored for the palettes of critics Robert Parker and James Laube. Because the company that does it keeps its list of customers confidential, th
    • More likely, if this stuff works they're use the computer analysis to make a better tasting wine, and then not tell anybody they did it. Then the wine snobs of the world who would never touch a wine that was made with the aid of computer analysis will judge it on it's taste alone and there will be the best of both worlds.

  • My pedantic moment for the day... (Score:5, Funny)

    by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) * on Friday December 30, 2005 @08:59PM (#14368182) Homepage Journal
    However, vinters don't have the luxury of waiting until a wine is ready to be drunk...

    For the record, the word is vintner [wiktionary.org], not vinter.

    In Soviet Russia, vinters are wery, wery cold.

  • Wine not WINE (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Bet I'm not the only /.'er to read "Wine" as "WINE" in the title.

  • Chemical anlaysis of wine [sciencenews.org] has been going on for some time for a variety of purposes [awri.com.au].

  • Yeasts (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:05PM (#14368214) Journal
    http://www.distillery-yeast.com/turbo_yeast_functi on.htm [distillery-yeast.com]

    Yea for turbo yeasts.

    I'm still waiting for yeasts that convert both sucrose/glucose & xylose to be available to your average consumer.

    Wine yeasts give 14%~18% alcohol content.
    Distillers yeast gives up to 21%
    xylose converting yeast can up the yield significantly
  • There went my dream job in the 'quality control' dept!
  • ... a non-porn reason to lick my screen!

  • Stop it right now! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:10PM (#14368233)
    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
    • That's one of the funniest things I've read today. And truthful.

      I wish I had saved a mod point for +1 informative.

      /Really not kidding
      //hates wine
      ///hates alcohol
      ////slash

    • It's true. You should have gotten some "funny" or "insightful" points, your choice. As long as the machines are testing for those, what's the controversy? It's just saving the vintner money. When they start telling us that a ten-year-old cabernet lacks the tang of a fresh cabernet, we'll know marketing has taken over the farm.
      • When they start telling us that a ten-year-old cabernet lacks the tang of a fresh cabernet, we'll know marketing has taken over the farm.

        Well, it works for budweiser and they're watery 'beer'.
    • Must be that arsenic blend I haven't tasted yet. Or box wine, perhaps.
    • Well, yesh, for the kind of wine the average slosheddatter can afford you are abschooly correct - hic!
    • stop. next you'll tell me that my cigar doesn't taste like saddle leather, raw meat, vanilla beans, dirt or roasted corn. and yes, those are all descriptions lifted from Cigar Afficionado.
    • Hmm, well, wine is typically made in stainless steel vats nowadays (even most of the reasonably good wines) which probably impart little to no flavor... so you're down to four. :-)

    • Re:Stop it right now! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zerblat ( 785 )
      Right. So, I assume that objects can't be orange unless they are made of oranges, and only violets can be violet? Of course, the same goes for beige, turquoise, indigo and pretty much any other color [wikipedia.org] beyond black, white, red, blue, green and yellow.

      Either that, or "chocolate", "vanilla", "burnt rubber", "red berries" etc are simply descriptions of flavors, just as "chartreuse", "lime" and "burnt umber" are descriptions of colors. Lacking a better way to classify and describe sensations, the only way to give

      • I can't find the site right now because of the extraordinary morass of wine-tasting sites on the internet, gooing up google, but as I recall, some time ago a scientific double blind study was run on groups of volunteers and individuals, testing a variety of wines. No two individuals or groups came up with the same or even slightly similar descriptions of the wines, even when presented with multiple choice options. Bring back the good old days of the Romans, when wine held approximately the same social posi

    • Really wine has 5 basic flavorings: 1) rotten grape 2) alcohol 3) wooden barrel 4) cork 5) mold

      I'm having this made into a bumper sticker. Thanks for the best laugh I've had all day!

  • Bah. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ruff_ilb ( 769396 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:10PM (#14368236) Homepage
    Old news. I've been able to debug my WINE install for ages now.

    And what's this talk about "grapes" and "yeast", are they new distros?

  • Under the influence (Score:3, Funny)

    by killmenow ( 184444 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:13PM (#14368255)
    Being under the influence of a goodly sum of wine as I type this, I can surely tell you no computer could possibly tell good wine from Mad Dog 20/20.

    Good wine ~ good art. I can't define it, but I know it when I drink it.

    Oh, and God Bless Oregon.

    w00t! ... (hic...)
    • It's so funny you mention Oregon. My father (rest his soul) was a chemical engineer who used to live in Oregon (along with myself and brothers). I recall many days of summer or off-days from school either picking cherries, plums, grapes or spending a Saturday in our plaid shirts and boots, with a clean paint bucket in hand and a pair of pruning shears trimming a huge maze through a fresh patch of blackberries.

      My father loved to make wine, it was one of his *many* hobbies; he never sold anything he made

  • Enologix (Score:4, Informative)

    by blakestah ( 91866 ) <blakestah@gmail.com> on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:22PM (#14368281) Homepage
    There's a lot of money in this. Not surprisingly, a former vintner decided to make this into a company [enologix.com]. In the past they have accurately ranked wine involved in taste comparisons by experts. Unexpectedly, they use a one dimensional scale which works, suggesting the wine judges use a one dimensional scale too.

    The exact formula is a mystery/trade secret. But it is no secret that Enologix tests many of the top wines at various points in production, and they AVERAGE a 5-6 point rating increase for the first year they are contracted by their clients.

    I've been to their web site before when it was useful and worked...right now they appear to be hosed.

    • Wired had a big article on Enologix a few years ago. The wine industry is terrified that once wine is figured out, good wine will be cranked out on an industrial scale, by mixing ethyl alcohol, water, and flavoring.

      This has already happened in the hard liquor industry. They try to keep a low profile, but Frank-Lin Distillers [frank-lin.com] makes over 1000 different brands of liquor sold on the West Coast. They use only about 100 different formulas, though. It's all about branding. They're located near the railroad y

      • Because, most of the time, it will be better.

        No, it'll be cheaper. To make, if not to buy.

        American "blended whiskeys" are usually not different whiskeys blended together, but whiskey blended with neutral spirits. Which is why they tend to be awful. Skyy is the fanciest stuff that Frank-Lin produces, which is why they make sure it shows up in those pictures. What they don't tell you is that Skyy comes off a separate dedicated production line. Pretty much everything else they make is bottom-shelf crap:

      • The wine industry is terrified that once wine is figured out, good wine will be cranked out on an industrial scale, by mixing ethyl alcohol, water, and flavoring.

        What do you think Jesus added to the water to turn it into wine?

  • Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Harker ( 96598 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:28PM (#14368300)
    Where's the fun in that?

    H.
  • Chilean scientists create mathematical formulas to help people decide which music sucks or not.

  • Homogenous Wine (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eander315 ( 448340 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:34PM (#14368333)
    This sounds like a great way to make every bottle taste the same, from vintage to vintage and vintner to vintner. Part of the fun of drinking wine is selecting a bottle that you like from the thousands available, not to mention tasting how your favorite wine changes from year to year as the growing conditions change.

    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.

    • The main 'fun' in drinking wine is getting bladdered. Don't get all pretentious and pretend that there's something sophisticated about drinking rotten grape juice.

      If this technology can produce a three quid bottle of wine that doesn't dissolve your teeth, it can only be a good thing.

  • But... (Score:4, Funny)

    by BluhDeBluh ( 805090 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:44PM (#14368360)
    Wine Is Not Ethanol... Oh comeon. Someone had to do it.

  • You know you should read less slashdot... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:56PM (#14368386) Homepage
    ...when the first thought is "How else are you going to test wine [winehq.com]?"

  • Red Wine (Score:3, Funny)

    by Fwonkas ( 11539 ) <joe@fla p p i n g c r a n e .com> on Friday December 30, 2005 @10:30PM (#14368483) Homepage

    I fear my reaction -- "Of course they could only analyze white wines." makes me a snob.

    Not that I drink much wine anyway. That there is the crazy sauce.

  • W.I.N.E. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Andrewkov ( 140579 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @10:36PM (#14368504)
    Wine Is Not an Emultar .. oh, wait a sec...

  • Oh Great!... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Mikkeles ( 698461 )
    LCD (lowest common denominator) wine.
  • Sounds like the program that Clear Channel radio was using to detect hits. They would feed music in one side, and magically out the other it would tell the suits what was 'Popular' music
  • French wines have not yet surrendered. They are NP-problems and can not be solved in a reasonnable time-frame. RTFA, my mistake, they are talking about foreign beverages.
    BTW, a wine is as good as the meal it goes with. Chili beans any one?
  • .. is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
  • I love telling this story.

    Customer was a winery, brought in their SQL Server sprocs which were taking 24 hours to run. The problem is: start each season with say 10,000 barrels of grape pulp/juice, say each holds 1,000 gallons of a type of grape. Siphon off 100 gallons from Barrel A, put it in Barrel B, assume it mixes perfectly. Now B has 1000 of B, 100 of A. Siphon off 100 gallons of the mixture into Barrel C. Now C has a lot of C, less of B, still less of A. Now maybe you take some of the mixture o
    • Um, excuse me? A post about computing formulas of grapes in wine on a computer attached to a story about computing formulas of grapes in wine on a computer is offtopic?
      • Um, excuse me? A post about computing formulas of grapes in wine on a computer attached to a story about computing formulas of grapes in wine on a computer is offtopic?

        Not only was your post on topic, it was also interesting. The moderator must be some newbie who hasn't read the moderater FAQ. I that hope that some other moderater mods it up.

        --
        Regards
        • Today I am a moderator adn rather than mod up the post which is perhaps what I should be doing - I'm making a post instead. Yes - the moderation has sunk to terrible new lows.

          I did have to laugh at the post however because the guy should have charged more for his work than the stupid blokes who wrote the first version of hte code. Alas in my exeriance people who can write good code often get paid poorly while the technically challenged are often so technically challenged that they don't know they can't wr

  • Wine (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pompatus ( 642396 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @04:05AM (#14369425) Journal
    Personally, my drink of choice is Crown and diet, but since I worked as a bartender for a wine bar for 2 years, I have a passing knowledge of wine. So here's my take. The statement "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." is misleading. It doesn't matter what "oenologists" say about a wine. If you want to find a "good" wine, try out several different ones and decide which one YOU like. Then find the least expensive wine you can find that suits your taste. My 2 personal favorites are the 1999 Katheryn Kennedy Lateral, and (cant remember the year) J. Bookwalter Merlot. However, right now I'm drinking a 2003 Rosemont Estate Shiraz, because it is quite similar to those 2, but it is $9 at the local grocery. And lastly, the most important thing. After you learn enough to bullshit your way through a wine conversation (the last 2 sentances made me sound like I know what I'm talking about, huh?), you can talk about it and enjoy it while not appearing to be a drunk. Because wine FUCKS YOU UP :)
  • "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

    And mercenary vinters, it would appear.

  • And here I thought it was all about emulator Wine and VIA the electronics manufacturer.
  • In case it hasn't already been mentioned...

    If you have any sort of interest in unique local versus standardized global products the documentary film Monovino [mondovinofilm.com] will be of interest.

    The documentary film interviews both small and large wine vinters regarding the art and/or business of making wine. As a geek, the interviews with the individuals and families of independent producers who took personal pride in their product were of interest. (As a side note, the extras on the USA DVDs were great.)

    The fil

    • The film actually made me curious enough to want to discuss the wine biz (looking for a slashdot for wine), but the only decent wine geek discussions I found were on the wine spectator's [winespectator.com] web site.

      Far and away the leading mainstream bulletin board is hosted by Robert Parker himself [and administered by Mark Squires]:

      The anti-Parker site is a little obscure. Be forewarned that you will need to know a LOT about wine before you

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