Chemists Make Better Vino?

Filed in archive Wine Making on September 12, 2006

While my high school chemistry teacher was wonderful, I have to admit that chemistry just wasn't my thing. Now that I know more about wine and admit to the occasional fantasy of having my own vineyard some day, I regret my initial dismissal of this science class. Sure does come in handy for wine makers.

To that end, a group of scientists got together at the 232nd annual meeting of the American Chemical Society (yes 232!) and discussed how they could make a better wine. From Better wine through chemistry, though some complain about taste:

The wine scientists aim to bring the same chemical analysis used in chemical plants, oil refineries and pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities to make wine manufacturing more efficient, consistent and, of course, more profitable as the industry continues to enjoy burgeoning sales.

Last year, U.S. retail wine sales totaled $26 billion, a 5 percent increase over 2004 and California winemakers produced nearly two-thirds of the 703 million gallons sold, according to the San Francisco-based Wine Institute.

Many winemakers are now dabbling with high-tech chemical analysis to streamline the yearlong wine making process and squeeze more money out of the grape. For now, chemical analysis is largely being used to make harvest decisions - but others are using high technology equipment to tweak the grape juice while it ferments.

Michael Cleary, manager of grape and wine chemistry at the world's largest winemaker, E & J Gallo, said before the Sunday meeting that deciding what constitutes a quality grape has been largely a subjective process, left to a vineyard's location, the previous performance of the particular grower and simply looking at the grape for blemishes. Harvest decisions historically have relied heavily on simply tasting the grape.

Too much technology is a highly controversial issue in the wine industry, and I guess I can understand that. What's so wrong with just tasting the grape?