An Encouraging Start in the Wine Analysis Business

…continued from “How It All Began“.

In July of 2008, a year after my former company (Molecular Devices) was acquired, my position as Vice President of reagent R&D was phased out.  Soon after that I was able to wrap up my affairs in Palo Alto and join my wife Marcia in Encinitas near San Diego, where we had conducted a commuting marriage for the last 7 years.

Jobs were not plentiful at that time, especially in my field.  I started Sportsman Consulting and had a few clients, but it wasn’t much.  I also worked on a startup called Ascent Biosciences, but in December of 2009 the company moved away.

I talked with my wife about the sulfite meter.  She encouraged me to pursue it.  About this time I decided to open a lab in some space within a warehouse that I rented from a friend of mine in Carlsbad.  Sportsman Consulting had just enough income to pay the rent.  I built a simple prototype sulfite meter and sent it to Dave Donofrio, a former colleague of mine who had been a marketing director at Molecular Devices, and who is a serious winemaker in the Santa Cruz mountain area.

Dave had just purchased a Hanna 84100 autotitrator himself, after struggling for years to keep his sulfites under control by other methods.  Dave endorsed my idea of a simple and accurate sulfite test and agreed readily to be the first guinea pig. Dave did some comparisons and reported that the prototype gave results that were quite close to the Hanna.  (Dave is now advising Vinmetrica on Marketing.)  Dave suggested that we could support a sales price that would make a viable business.

We went on from there.  I retained Bill Ewing after seeing his name on the San Diego Electrical Engineers web site.  I picked him because he lives nearby me in Encinitas.  But what a lucky choice that was!

Bill was enthusiastic from the start and we hit it off right away.  We put together the SC-100 prototype in about 4 months. In the meantime I worked out the details of the chemistry to make it a stable product, and found a manufacturer that could make the electrodes to my specification.

More comparative data was forthcoming.  Dave really liked the new prototype and showed it to some colleagues in the winemaking business, and I began to get some feedback from other winemakers.

One of my first early demos was with three Ramona Valley winemakers who were getting ready to bottle their Merlot.  We did a side by side comparison between the SC-100 and their manual Ripper method.

The way they did their assay was illuminating:  take a 10 mL wine sample.  Dilute it with about 100 mL of water. (Gasp!  You’re going to make the endpoint very fuzzy!)  They explained that by so diluting it, they could reduce the opacity of the red color to see the blue endpoint better.  They added starch and acid in the usual way.

Then they took a 10 ml graduated pipette and filled it to the zero mark with 0.02N iodine.  (Gasp!  This is your burette?!).  They then titrated from this pipette.  It took 0.3 mL to reach an endpoint that they all agreed to after some squinting.  This calculated out to about 20 ppm of free SO₂.

At the same time, I did an assay on a 25 mL sample in the usual way using the SC-100.  I determined 6 ppm.

We talked about this, and they agreed to repeat their method, this time using a 25 mL sample.  They titrated to the endpoint that they felt was correct:  also 0.3 mL (mind you, reading 0.3 mL off a 10 mL pipette isn’t exactly giving yourself much resolution!)  Hmmm.  But of course now the calculation gave 8 ppm, since they had taken 25 mL instead of 10 ml wine.

Then I suggested we check the strength of their iodine solution.  I produced a vial with pre-weighed amounts of ascorbic acid  – I use these as a quick check of my SO2 Titrant and they are accurate to 5%.

Turned out that their 0.02N iodine solution, which was near its expiry, was actually 0.015N.  So their 8 ppm was actually 6 ppm, and in fact we had numbers that agreed exactly!

With several examples like this under my belt, I knew we were ready to release the SC-100. Our assessment of the competition showed that inexpensive sulfite tests available for winemakers were not practical.

Chemetrics Titrets don’t work in red wines (according to the manufacturer).
People report struggling to use the test-strip indicator kits offered by some competitors. Aeration-oxidation (AO) is time consuming and somewhat complicated.

Other options were sending out samples for analysis (~$20 a pop) or buying an autotitrator of some kind ($600 or more and significant yearly maintenance.) And even the autotitrators require calibration each time you use them, adding significant time to get the job done.

In the 18 months since we released the SC-100, we have sold over 500 of them.  I think this is a testimony to our commitment to bring low cost, simple and fast testing to winemakers.  Most importantly, what we hear from our customers is satisfaction.

“Great product!”

“I love my Vinmetrica”

“My autotitrator is now a door stop!”

Now we are on the next adventure.  With the release of the SC-200 and SC-300, we have added pH and TA measurement to the product line.  The SC-300 is great for those who want to get reliable testing for pH,TA and SO2 without spending a fortune and sacrificing large amounts of bench space.

I’d rather see you spend your money on some new oak barrels!

We will continue to be in the business of quality products for wine testing.  In the works is a test for malic acid. We hope that the malic acid test is as simple and affordable as SO2 now is through Vinmetrica!