Science Daily reports that scientists have invented an electronic tongue that can determine the grape variety and the vintage of wine with the press of a button. The device is said to be cheap, fast and portable.
Designed for quality control in the field, the device is made up of six sensors which detect substances characteristic of a certain wine variety. Components such as acid, sugar and alcohol can be measured by this detection, and from these parameters it can determine the age and variety of the wine.
The tongue was invented by Cecilia Jimenez-Jorquera and colleagues from the Barcelona Institute of Microelectronics, Spain, and is reported in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal The Analyst.
Wine industry specialists told the researchers they lacked a fast way to assess quality of wines - it takes a long time to send samples to a central laboratory for processing.
This new tongue is not only swift, but also portable, cheap to manufacture, and can be trained to "taste" new varieties as required.
It might seem a small matter to some but a story in the Guardian's wordofmouth section says that the electronic wine taster could be valuable in helping the wine industry battle fraud.
There is one big reason why we need a machine with a more precise ability to identify wine than any human palate, and that is to detect wine fraud. If a grape other than the stated variety or vintage has been inserted in your glass or mine, it makes precisely bugger all difference - if we're enjoying the glass it's as relevant as the provenance of the oranges in our morning juice - but to those who've invested many hundreds of thousands of pounds in supposedly important bottles it's crucial.
Collectors of expensive wines may have a friend in this cheap and portable electronic wine taster. A Bloomberg story calculates the fine-wine market at $6.8 billion. With some collectors paying $40,000 a bottle you can be sure there will be an interest in this new device.
