Enologix

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Enologix, a company based in Sonoma, California, offers wine quality management systems and consulting to client California wineries. The company was founded in 1993 by Leo McCloskey. It claims that wine quality can be measured chemically, and a score assessed, much like a wine critic. Clients include prestigious wineries such as Beaulieu, Diamond Creek, and Ridge Vineyards.

The New York Times (see links) story says Enologix's metrics are correlated with market performance metrics, including 100-points critics' scores. Since scores are linked to price and volume between 2,000 and 100,000 cases the metrics are a powerful management tool for fine winemakers.

The wine press discredits Enologix for legitimizing critics' 100-point scores. Wine writers claim that the Enologix system ignores terroir, chasing critic's scores to the exclusion of anything else, and is only capable of helping to make one very particular style of wine. Terroir is the taste of the place where the vines grow. Enologix claims it is an advocate of terroir as well as traditional quality ratings which are widespread in Europe's traditional winegrowing regions.

Terroir is the ecotypic expression of grape flavors we can taste in wines we drink. Wines with a high quality index express terroir. Tasters find it easier to detect intensely flavored wines attributes. A pale rosé of Cabernet expresses less terroir than an intense Chateau Lafite Rothschild or Ridge Vineyards Montebello.

Enologix is part of the "quant movement" in the United States. It has affected consumer financial markets (see Chicago Quantitative Alliance) to Major League Baseball (see Moneyball, M. Lewis). As in those industries, it may be that early adoptors of Enologix are running away with the scores.