More Options and Reduced Costs for Spoilage Tests
St. Helena, CA – ETS Laboratories, the world’s leading independent laboratory serving the global wine industry, has launched new testing panels for their proprietary Scorpions service that make the service more affordable and more informative. Scorpions panels provide winemakers the tools they need to rapidly identify and quantify live spoilage microbes in their wines. The new panels give winemakers a more complete picture with a significant price reduction, thanks to advances in automation and new technologies.
“Scorpions technology has been widely adopted by our clients as part of their routine winemaking toolkit,” says Gordon Burns, CEO of ETS Laboratories. “To make it easier for winemakers to get rapid insights into the full range of spoilage microbes, we’ve simplified the process by offering three main panels, instead of the individual tests as before. And by investing in new technologies we have also been able to reduce the cost by at least 25%.”
ETS developed the series of Scorpions assays to provide winemakers a tool for rapid identification and quantitation of live spoilage microbes in their wines. The assays utilize a combination of gene amplification and hybridization to accurately identify and quantify the total number of viable cells in a sample. Proactive use of Scorpions technology enables early detection of wine spoilage microbes, allowing early intervention, minimizing or preventing spoilage and preserving quality.
The once long lists of Scorpion testing options have been condensed into three panels for clients to choose from: the Yeast Panel, the Bacteria Panel and the Combined Panel. The Yeast Panel detects fermentation and spoilage yeast (Saccharomyces, Brettanomyces, and Zygosaccharomyces). The Bacteria Panel detects malolactic bacteria, lactic acid bacteria, and acetic acid bacteria (Oenococcus, Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, and Acetic Acid bacteria) and can be used to assess stuck and sluggish fermentations. The Combined Panel includes all of the yeast panel and bacteria panel organisms, giving you the most complete analytical picture of what microbes are in your wine.
Over the years Scorpion testing has been widely accepted in the industry and makes up about 80% of the requested routine microbiology monitoring at ETS, allowing winemakers to radically change their response times to prevent spoilage.
“The new panels will reduce confusion with a simpler menu that includes all the organisms, allowing winemakers to make quick production decisions with the full picture of their spoilage microbes,” says Dr. Richard DeScenzo, Microbiology Group Leader at ETS Laboratories. “In this day and age, when prices are going up, we have worked very hard to implement automation and new technologies, allowing ETS to offer more information at a reduced cost for each Scorpion panel.”
ABOUT ETS LABORATORIES
ETS was established in 1978 by Gordon and Marjorie Burns in the basement of their Main Street home. As the wine industry developed in size and complexity, ETS responded by investing in modern equipment and facilities and by hiring highly trained technicians and researchers. As ETS grew, the company constantly developed new methods of analysis and introduced many new technologies to the wine industry. Whatever the innovation, winemakers saw it first at ETS.
At ETS, accuracy is more than a virtue—it is a passion embraced by our entire staff. Our clients have always wanted fast and accurate results, so ETS is dedicated to strong quality control programs in order to meet these goals. In 1997 ETS became the first ISO ‐ accredited independent laboratory serving the wine industry. The ISO 17025 standard requires internal and external audits of methods, systems, training and results. Today ETS is one of the most advanced wine laboratories in the world, and offers the industry’s largest selection of ISO-accredited analyses.
