Thursday off to a strong start with the news that magnificently monikered Spanish boffin Cecilia Jiminez-Jorquera, from the Barcelona Institute of Microelectronics, has invented an electronic tongue. Although designed to detect fraudulent wines in restaurants and winebars, the application for SA’s erratic wine competitions and controversial wine guides are enormous. The e-tongue can measure sugar, acid and alcohol content and tell the difference between different grape cultivars and vintages.

At the moment, its repertoire is limited to classifying Airen, Chardonnay, Malvasia and Macabeu grapes so more work is clearly needed to distinguish claret from Bordeaux, as John Cleese is wont to say. But with the Breedekloof appellation meeting earlier this week to discuss an appellation-wide boycott of the Platter Guide until the tasting table is leveled through the adoption of blind assessments and with Nederburg Cellarmaster Razvan Macici claiming his wines don’t get a fair shake at sighted tastings, ET could be the answer.

Likewise with wine competitions like the recent Lexus Shiraz Challenge reduced to giving over 80% of qualifiers to the second round of judging a free pass based on their track record in an attempt to improve consistency of results, perhaps robots can succeed where fallible humans fail. The controversial new seeding strategy doesn’t seem to be working looking at the results and an analysis of judges’ scores which are all over the place. Electrons could hardly do worse.

Does the advent of the E-tongue mean that the burgeoning cottage industry of pompous bowties and show judges may soon have to return to their previous professions of picture framer and PR luvvie? Consumers and producers will certainly hope so.

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