Application of ultrasonic tensiography to analysis of red wine

An ultrasonic tensiographic system has recently been developed and described elsewhere. The system is based on the use of ultrasonic interferometry on liquid drops as they grow. Earlier results have demonstrated the capacity of this system to distinguish between different liquids, with particular emphasis on beverages. This system has now been applied to make measurements on a range of concentrations of red wine, and results are presented. The resulting characteristic curves are highly feature-rich, and show an evolution of these features with concentration. The measurements suggest that the system is currently capable of resolving concentration variations in red wine of approximately 1.5%, and is potentially capable of much finer resolution than this. The system response time is constrained only by the length of time required to grow a drop. In this case, drops are formed over a period of approximately 90-100 seconds, although it has been shown previously that there is sustantial leeway allowable in the flow rate without degradation of the results.