An electronic tongue to taste the champagne

The Sensors and Biosensors Group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) has developed an electronic tongue to identify different types of champagne . The device enables a classification in an automated manner similar to that conduct a sommelier and can be useful for the detection of defects during the production of these wines. The different types of cava vary in amount of sugar that is added to the liquor dispatch after the second fermentation, ie, giving carbon dioxide. The resulting classification is: Brut Nature (<3 g / L, no sugar added), Extra Brut (<6 g / L), Brut (<12 g / L), Extra Dry (12-17 g / L), Dry (17-35 g / L), Semi-dry (33-50 g / L) and Dulce (> 50 g / L).

To design the electronic tongue to dig, Manel del Valle and his team have carried out the identification of different cava samples based on voltammetric measures. Thanks to the combination of chemical measurement systems and mathematical tools have achieved advanced processing to mimic the human taste system and carry out a task of distinguishing between different kinds of champagne. They have also managed to quantify the added sugar in the production process of cava, which demonstrates the potential of these processing tools. For now, the tongue can identify three types of champagne now: Brut, Brut Nature and Semi Dry, but with proper training can distinguish all types of market cava . The electronic tongues are bio-inspired sensor systems that try to mimic the effect the perception of man. In these devices, an array of sensors (with a differentiated response, broad and complementary) is used to obtain chemical information from a sample. As in the biological mechanism, it requires a learning process or training of the electronic tongue for it to be able to recognize the properties you want to identify.