Wine tasting Robot??

[admin]

If you’re at a loss for words when it comes to describing wine, you now have another choice besides reading a book or good old-fashioned trial and error: robots!

Yes, the 2-ft tall creature to the right claims to be able to tell good wine from bad and even discern particular wine brands. How about that for your next party trick?

There are only two problems standing in the way of this robot annhilating sommeliers and wine geeks in general. One: price. The AP reports one of the researchers who developed the robot as saying it costs “about as much as a new car,” though they are trying to get that down to a more manageable $1,000.

[jasen]

I really like that idea. Wonder how it analyzes the wine?
Actually, that's a great idea for a website. A database of wine mass spectrometry/liquid chromotography profiles. You'd be able to rank them based on similarity, check out differences between vintages, or between the same wines from different parts of the world. Tell it a specific wine you like, and it could show you the top closest matches to that.
Now, I just need to find an investor willing to buy me a $4000 LC/MS machine. And lots of wine.

[HadEnough]

I wonder what the criteria is for determining 'good' or 'bad' wine.

I doubt it has much to do with taste. I don't know of any mechanical means for measuring taste.

It would be easy to test the machine ; simply have it compare 2buck chuck with good wine!
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2buck chuck is an excllent 'benchmark' for it's 'genre!' :lol:

[bigjohnstud4200]

If a robot is doing all the testing, how am I going to get loanded at the wine testing tours??? :confused:

[jasen]

I wonder what the criteria is for determining 'good' or 'bad' wine.

I doubt it has much to do with taste. I don't know of any mechanical means for measuring taste.

It would be easy to test the machine ; simply have it compare 2buck chuck with good wine!

It would have to use a database. At first, it wouldn't know good from bad. You would have to have it analyze a wine, and then give that wine a rating. After enough of these, it would be able to predict from statistical analysis how good a wine is. The chemical composition of a wine determines it's taste.
To me, the most useful feature would be comparative analysis. Rather than asking it which wines are good, tell it which wine you like, and it would be able to give you a list of wines that are most chemically similar to that.

[HadEnough]

as more than a curiosity.

Because when it identifies (Insert your favorite crap wine vintner) wines as crap, (The crap winery) will sue. In the U.S., that is.

Which is unfortunate since, if it worked it would help identify bargains and expose frauds.