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Enologix is a privately held
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
corporation that designs
predictive analytics Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of statistical techniques from data mining, predictive modeling, and machine learning that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events. In business ...
for luxury winegrowing. The company sells grape and wine quality indices, models, software and consulting products. Enologix created the first algorithms that predict grape harvest dates, grading new wines, digital blends, and future market price, volume and taste scores. The most important metric among winemakers are digital blends and a taste index which predicts 100-point scores of consumer critics such as Robert Parker.Best of 200
Math Has Your Number.
Business Week Dec. 2006
It claims that the quality of
wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...
can be measured chemically, and a score assessed, much like a wine critic.W. Neuma
The Grapes of Math
Wired News Nov. 2001
Clients include Beaulieu,
Cakebread Cellars Cakebread Cellars is a Napa Valley winery known for its Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc wines, which are internationally distributed. Founded in 1973 by Jack and Dolores Cakebread in Rutherford, California, the winery produces approximately 200,000 ...
, Diamond Creek,
Ridge Vineyards Ridge Vineyards is a California winery specializing in Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, and Chardonnay wines. Ridge produces wine at two winery locations in northern California. The original winery facilities are located at an elevation of on Mon ...
. Enologix's metrics have been correlated with market performance metrics, including 100-points critics' scores.David Darlington
The Chemistry of a 90+ Wine
''New York Times'', August 7, 2005


History

Established July, 1989 in Santa Cruz, California, and incorporated 2001, the company was previously named McCloskey, Arrhenius and Company for its first 4 years, but changed its name to Enologix to reflect the company's expansion into luxury winemaking products for Napa Valley winemakers. Enologix is derived from Oeno, Greek goddess of wine and
Logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
, Greek for reasoning. Between 1989 and 1993 former winemaker Dr. Leo McCloskey and natural products chemist Dr. Susanne Arrhenius, both
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
trained
chemical ecologist A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent Chemical element, elements by physical separation m ...
s; along with the advice of mathematician Dr. Marshall Sylvan,
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, created the first mathematical model for California luxury wine market performance. It was tested with winemakers in California, Oregon, Washington and France between 1989 and 1993, including Chalone Vineyard, Joseph Phelps Vineyards, Ridge Vineyards in California, Rex Hill in Oregon, Canoe Ridge in Washington and Domaines Barons Rothschild properties in Bordeaux and Chile. The most important winemaker to help Enologix was Richard Graff of
Chalone Vineyard Chalone Vineyard is located in the Chalone AVA south of San Francisco, California, United States, on an unusual geological formation called the Gavilan benchland. The soil is rich in limestone and calcium carbonate and also contains a signifi ...
, who insisted that McCloskey prove the model with Chateau Lafite Rothchild wines. Models were developed for traditional style, taste quality and aging potential by 1993 when it was branded and trademarked Enologix and sold for the first time in February 1994 to Peter Michael Winery, Calistoga, California. It went into widespread use in the Napa Valley.


Methods and Innovations

Enologix quality model has been used in Argentina, California, France, Long Island, Oregon, Washington to optimize taste quality to improve sales. Wine modeling, the task of building an abstract representation (a model) of wine price, volume and tasting scores had eluded enologists since the 1855 Classification of Bordeaux. In the 1990s Enologix wrote the first mathematics used to compute taste quality from statistical correlations between grape chemistry and bottled wine tasting scores. Dow Jones', Market Watch, used Enologix to exemplify how innovation by "Quants" has been extended from the financial industry to improve the Food/beverage sectorPaul T. Farrel

The Singularity' is already here! Merging behavioral finance, "rockin' math," technology ... and profits'', May 1, 2007
Enologix approach to winemaking begins with market metrics and then linking them to a chemical breakdown of some of the flavor components of wine-including
anthocyanins Anthocyanins (), also called anthocyans, are water-soluble vacuolar pigments that, depending on their pH, may appear red, purple, blue, or black. In 1835, the German pharmacist Ludwig Clamor Marquart gave the name Anthokyan to a chemical compo ...
, norisoprenoids,
phenols In organic chemistry, phenols, sometimes called phenolics, are a class of chemical compounds consisting of one or more hydroxyl groups (— O H) bonded directly to an aromatic hydrocarbon group. The simplest is phenol, . Phenolic compounds are c ...
,
tannins Tannins (or tannoids) are a class of astringent, polyphenolic biomolecules that bind to and precipitate proteins and various other organic compounds including amino acids and alkaloids. The term ''tannin'' (from Anglo-Norman ''tanner'', f ...
and
terpenes Terpenes () are a class of natural products consisting of compounds with the formula (C5H8)n for n > 1. Comprising more than 30,000 compounds, these unsaturated hydrocarbons are produced predominantly by plants, particularly conifers. Terpenes ar ...
-and analyzing a client's wine and possibly comparing it with a "target" wine from the companies' database which include profiles of
First Growth First Growth (french: Premier Cru) status is a classification of wines primarily from the Bordeaux region of France. The best of the best wines were assigned the highest rank of Premier Cru; only five wines, Château Lafite Rothschild, Châtea ...
Bordeaux wine Bordeaux wine ( oc, vin de Bordèu, french: vin de Bordeaux) is produced in the Bordeaux region of southwest France, around the city of Bordeaux, on the Garonne River. To the north of the city the Dordogne River joins the Garonne forming the ...
and other high scoring bottles. Throughout the growing season, Enologix would test and track the developing components of the grapes and can use calculation to try and better gauge the optimal ripeness of the grapes to set an ideal time for
harvesting Harvesting is the process of gathering a ripe crop from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper. On smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most labor-i ...
. By late 2005, McCloskey said that company had a database of more than 50,000 wines.Chris Ayres
Hang bouquet, check the data
The Times (UK), August 20, 2005
Enologix has created the first wine informatics; which includes the science of information, the practice of information processing, and the engineering of information systems.Thomas Kellner
Digital Dionysus
Forbes, February 8, 2004.
Enologix benchmarks vineyard and winery samples to the customers competitive set of bottled wines for sale. In 2007 Enologix made the first Classification of Napa Valley American Viticultural Areas-to TASTE³ which brings together more than forty of the most compelling writers, thinkers, chefs, winemakers, journalists, artisans, and executives as speakers.Leo McCloskey
Classification of Napa Valley
TASTE³, May 7, 2007
Enologix claims that by using their methodology that winemakers can predict with 95% accuracy the average critical scores within two and a half points and that with 80% accuracy they could predict the score within one and a half points. In addition, the consultation and testing that happens during the growing seasons and
winemaking Winemaking or vinification is the production of wine, starting with the selection of the fruit, its fermentation into alcohol, and the bottling of the finished liquid. The history of wine-making stretches over millennia. The science of wine and ...
period can provide feedback that can help a client potentially see a 5-point increase their score over their previous years' average scores for red wines and 6 points for white wine.


Awards and recognition

*voted Best 2006 Ideas by Business Week


Criticisms of Disruptive New Model

Enologix solution was disruptive. Models are deterministic, with the intent of predicting market performance. Evolution of Enologix was caused due to maturation of US wine markets, as such the company added value to company financial performance. Winemakers worldwide began to use media critics’ 100-point taste quality scores to market wines for higher prices. By 1996 Enologix evolved to correlate winemakers’ to critics’ quality models. Winemakers began to use Enologix metrics to improve company performance without saying so to anyone. It was a disruptive new strategy, alternately lauded by journalists and dismissed by competing academics, but not most winemakers. By 2001 academics wanted the company to publish its—"Black Box Mathematics"—scientific methodologies, largely for reasons to compete. Wine writers supporting food section advertisers found the new model was an anathema to their expertise. A Wired Magazine story pointed out that Enologix legitimized consumer critics’ 100-point scores, which had replaced wine writers taste descriptors. Academics, such as Roger Boulton at
UC-Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institu ...
, would question the methods Enologix uses and whether they actually work because Enologix has not publicly released their data and exact details of measurements. But the real issue was that no academic had published their model before Enologix. Enologix has replied to such criticism by noting that their methods are
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