Taste is a delicate thing. But now sommeliers might have a bit of competition heading their way.
Scientists in Spain have developed an electronic 'tongue' that can decipher three of the seven types of cava, reports CNN.
The 'tongue' tells you whether its sweet, brut or medium dry, it can also be trained to determine how much sugar is too much and figure out all types of cava on the market, say researchers at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.
Reduction in the number of human tasters is one consequence, but so too is further developing technologies that can pinpoint fake vintage wine.
"'It could perform automatic tests in the production process to detect defects and may be a replacement for the human sensory panel used by many wine producers," lead scientist Manel del Valle told the Daily Mail.
The way it works? To replicate human taste, scientists used biosensors to detect chemical information, which is then fed through a computerized systems to interpret the data, just like a human brain and nervous system.
This isn't the first time such a device has been developed in the winery world.
In 2009, France developed an electronic "nose," which could detect the type of wine and where it was made.
Last year Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology devised an electronic "nose" capable of identifying exactly when to harvest grapes.