The Death of the Art of Wine Tasting: Here’s the Electronic Tongue
Tongues have been wagging recently following reports that a team at the Barcelona Institute of Microelectronics in Spain had developed an electronic tongue -or a robot, if you like- that could easily pick excellent wines from a line of fakes.
The tongue was invented by Cecilia Jiménez-Jorquera and her colleagues at the famed institution and is reported in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, The Analyst. She said of her innovation: “The device is based on similar principles to the human tongue and is sensitive to just five different tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, acidic and umami (savory).
Our results have demonstrated the potential of using multi-sensors as electronic tongues not only for distinguishing the samples according to the grape variety and the vintage year, but also for quantitative prediction of several sample parameters.”
Could these be “green” attributes of the new tongue, someone? It is said to be fast, portable, cheap to manufacture, and can be trained to “taste” new varieties as required.
As expected, since the reports, views and counter-views (over a glass of wine, of course) have been parlayed in hundreds of forums including blogs and even radio and TV talk shows in Spain but this certainly does not mark the death of the art of wine tasting.
At least not sooner, according to Robert Parker of Wine Advocate, reputedly one of the world’s most respected wine critics. He was quoted as saying: “It’s hard to believe any computer can interpret the nuances of smell and taste as well as a human’s olfactory gland.”
The wine enthusiasts’ encyclopedia, EncycloWine, says that wine tasting is the sensory evaluation of wine, encompassing more than taste, but also mouthfeel, aroma, and color. The main aims of wine tasting are to (1) assess the wine’s quality, (2) determine the wine’s maturity and suitability for aging or immediate drinking, (3) detect the aromas and flavors of the wine and (4) discover the many facets of wine, so as to better appreciate it.
It says further: to assess a wine’s quality, one must gauge its complexity of aroma and flavor, determine the intensity of the aroma and flavor, check that the flavors and structural elements - such as acid, tannin and alcoholic strength - are well balanced, and finally see how long the wine persists in the mouth after tasting.
If the art of wine tasting as perfected in great wine tasting schools like Jonathon Alsop’s Boston Wine School or even Wine Campus which offers a Honors Brevet via e-learning is not a diminishing form, pressing a button to determine grape variety and vintage can be a long shot.
As they say in the wine business, time will make it even better.
Image credit: ‘Etoile at Flickr under a Creative Commons license
