Scent Companies: Can Flavor Be Reduced to Formulas?

Penny Sleuth Contributor — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 19:10:33 +0000

Jonathan Kolber discusses Companies developing Scent-based technology, and the possibilites of such technology in general.

[A Note From James Boric:

For today's Sleuth, we once again turn to our friend Jonathan Kolber, a leading technology analyst and entrepreneur.

Jonathan knows startup companies inside and out. He helped Hide & Seek Technologies, Inc. -- the company that pioneered limited-use, or "disposable," CDs and DVDs -- become a $12 million company.

Now he uses the same skills to identify and analyze other new technologies and the companies behind them. Readers of his The Emerging Capital Report are looking at profits of 50%…33%…and 99% on open positions.

Below, Jonathan shares the latest breakthrough he’s keeping an eye on. It could soon completely alter the wine industry. But not long after that, it could change everything from how we detect heart attacks to how we pick up dates! Enjoy…]

It’s rare that a technology stretches my credulity. I’ve simply seen too many things become real in the past few years that had looked like science fiction.

Nevertheless, the notion that the sense of smell and taste can be reduced to software and hardware is hard for me to accept. That’s why I’ve been following companies such as Enologix with great interest.

Enologix ( http://www.enologix.com/ ) is in the business of using proprietary software and databases to analyze the flavor attributes of different grapes and predict which combinations will produce superior wines.

The company, not surprisingly, is located in Sonoma, Calif. Its approach, though apparently well received by the industry, has been largely based on trial and error.

Scent Companies: The Science of Making Wine

Now a professor of chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University is taking it a step further. He believes he can systematize the production of high-quality wine by mastering the flavor characteristics.

Dr. Lorenz Biegler is developing software to automate the fermentation process to a very fine degree of control, since fermentation appears to be the most critical factor governing what flavors arise in a particular batch of wine. Study and systematization of other factors will follow.

Biegler and associates in Chile are now focused on developing a complete understanding of how yeast behaves in the fermentation process. One potential outcome of great interest to vintners is the elimination of “stalled fermentation,” which can ruin a vat of wine.

His ultimate intent is to create the same sorts of computerized systems with sensors and governors (switches that control activity in a system to keep a variable within acceptable parameters) used in industrial manufacturing processes.

Key to this is the concept that flavor components can be isolated and quantified, much like active ingredients are isolated from wild plants to derive new pharmaceutical drugs. Scientists already know how to do this. What’s new is the notion of modeling their appropriate ratios to determine effect on the human palate.

Under Biegler’s vision, wine would become a standardized industrial product with many thousands of variations. While fermentation is not the only factor of significance, mastering it is exceptionally difficult and will take winemaking a significant distance from art to industry.

The work is currently restricted to white wines, since reds are far more complex. However, eventually, it should apply to all wines.

What will it mean to the wine industry? Prices of fine wines will drop radically, and even more varieties of wine that are available today will enter the market.

I’m not a wine collector, but if I were, I’d cease buying wine as investment and restrict my purchases to bottles I intend to drink.

Assuming this works, it has some significant implications beyond just wine.

With its enormous variety of smells and flavors, wine is one of the most sophisticated sensory experiences known to man. That’s why a bottle of old Lafitte Rothschild can cost thousands of times as much as an ordinary bottle of varietal.

Scent Companies: Smelling Emotional Reactions?

If the art of making wines of exceptional taste and smell can be systematized, it stands to reason that practically anything to do with taste and smell will also fall to automation sooner or later.

Consider emotions. While humans can’t currently “smell” emotions, dogs certainly can. Since they’re detecting a certain ratio of chemicals in minute quantities, it stands to reason that a sophisticated handheld sensor apparatus arising from work like that at Carnegie Mellon will someday be able to tell you a lot of interesting things about the person next to you.

Is the lady seated next to you at the bar sexually excited by you or merely feigning it in hopes you’ll buy her a drink?

Is the job applicant or prospective business associate seated across the table telling you the truth?

New kinds of medical devices will be able to monitor trace chemicals in the breath. For example, distinctive trace chemicals enter the breath when the body has a heart attack. Someone who has previously had a heart attack may be equipped with such a device to help distinguish a second heart attack from mere indigestion.

It’s easy to envision The Sharper Image selling devices such as these circa 2012. In addition, the potential applications for law enforcement and espionage are myriad.

Technological breakthroughs usually come with some unintended consequences. In many cases, those unintended consequences lead to exciting technology applications that get licensed into early-stage companies. We’ll be watching for them.

To your profitable future,

Jonathan Kolber

January 11, 2006

Scent Companies: Can Flavor Be Reduced to Formulas? was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

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Scent Companies: Can Flavor Be Reduced to Formulas?