Can computers "taste" wine? Check out this interesting article: LINK

For those too lazy to read the whole thing, here's an interesting excerpt:

quote:

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It was a cheap stunt, but effective. Leo McCloskey lined up a dozen vintners from the Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville, Calif. in the corporate tasting room and asked them to rank the contents of ten bottles. When they'd finished swirling, spitting and recording their verdicts, McCloskey pulled out a sealed envelope. Inside was a list of the same wines ranked by a computer system he'd programmed to determine quality. The list matched dead-on the Mondavi judges' winner and loser.

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"Which is something akin to reducing love to an algorithm"

says it all..

I've heard stories such with this that labs in Sonoma County can tailor your wine to Parker's palate to generate a good score.

To me this is the worst thing can happen to the world of wine. This is not winemaking any longer, it's like blending the correct formula for Coke, Sprite, or Gatorade.

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www.winebid.com

Yes, and those fruit forward wines are dominating the marketplace. It appears the right bank wines of Bordeaux have started making California wine! Soon, you won't be able to tell any difference from Napa and St Emilion

this will only become a way for wine to be formulated like Dr. Pepper if the consumer allows that to happen

if everyone continues to choose wines that express the viticulture and terroir the grapes were grown in then this should not become an issue...it could become a way for winerys to make sure each vintage expresses what they want it to consistantly i guess this could be viewed as good by some and bad by others

besides crap grapes will always make crap wine and 90%+ of the work for wine is done in the vineyard

and do you really thing anyone that comes to these forums or is serious about wine would fall in line with the "riff raff" and bye the Big Red of wines...i think not

i also think other unique ways to "taste wine" with an instrument or formula will come about

also the great thing about sex is that if done properly each time is so unique and crazy and differant that there is no way to even start to derive a formula

All that a lab device can react to is the chemical composition of the wine. I have always found a great deal of variance in my reaction to a wine - based on mood, accompaniments such as food or people, etc. For the same reason, I often will not completely make up my mind about a wine until I've had it twice to see if my reaction is the same or not.

A lab device isn't going to react to all the environmental factors that account for my enjoyment of a wine. However, if the machine gobbles up too much of the wine, then there will be less for me. So let's leave the machine out of it for now (unless, of course, it's a machine that can reproduce more of the wine ).

Texas, query,

If the flavour imparted by site is inherent, why would this not continue to be expressed, regardless of whether the wine was made by a computer or an artisan?

If 90% of a wine is made in the vineyard, why are wimemakers paid twice or more than viticulturists? Surely this is the market-forces expressing themselves based on market results?

Turley, Andrus et al take good fruit from a range of well-cared-for vineyards but make distinctive wines. In the same way, in Burgundy, several makers draw fruit from the same vineyard but make totally different wines. Same quality of fruit goes in, for distinctly different results out.

The "fine-work" done in a good vineyard is still very broad-brush; I suggest that most consumers wouldn't be able to tell even if the fruit was allowed to simply ferment to dry.

The Fine-work in the winery is very much more comples ... choice of oak, choice of toast; pre-ferment maceration, post-ferment maceration; selection of yeast strain (or use the yeast resident in the air of the winery), use of half a dozen choices of enzymes ..... all of which have serious flavour implications for the resulting wine.

Though it pains me to admit it, those techies in their white coats, do have a greater influence.....................................................ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!