Enologix of Sonoma takes juice samples from grapes, chemically analyzes them and then uses powerful software to generate taste recommendations on how to tweak the wine as it ferments. The suggestions recommended by Enologix are aimed at landing top scores from leading critics such as Robert Parker, who publishes the influential Wine Advocate.

"People like me finally said to ourselves that we can compute and calculate the outcome of anything ¡ª a stock or a wine," said Enologix founder Leo McCloskey. "In the case of wine, we compute the price and what the national critics will say."

McCloskey said his eight-person company consults with between 60 and 70 wineries a year and generates about $1.5 million in annual revenue.

He dismisses criticism that his use of chemistry compels his clients to sacrifice creativity and diversity by brewing similarly tasting wines to please the palates of a few powerful critics.

"It's a misconception to say we are all about chemistry," McCloskey said. "I'm using industry-based insider knowledge to build a model for predicting wine quality."

¡®Better wine through alchemy¡¯?
Still, many wineries are shunning such technology and embracing distinctly Luddite, back-to-the Earth growing techniques. That includes using things like "Preparation 500," the springtime vineyard spray made from the manure-stuffed cow horns, buried over fall and winter, then ground up and mixed with water and turned into a soil spray to stimulate root growth.

"We're trying to make better wine through alchemy," joked Jim Fullmer, director of the Philomath, Ore.-based Demeter Association, a nonprofit group that certifies vineyards as "biodynamic" ¡ª a sort of hyper-organic designation that means the vintner relies on such things as lunar cycles and planetary alignment rather than chemistry.

"Biodynamics is probably the exact opposite," Fullmer said. "Winemaking is an art."

Chemists such as Oregon State University's James Kennedy said that while scientific "sophistication has definitely gone way up," no one is close to turning wine into a monolithic, mass-produced and bland tasting product.

"That's a gross injustice to the complexity of the grape," said Kennedy, who is trying to identify the chemicals responsible for giving red wines their thick, bold textures in the mouth. "Grapes are too complex and no two vintages are the same ¡ª it's very difficult to bring a Budweiser approach to wine making."

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