Detection of abnormal fermentations in wine process by multivariate statistics and pattern recognition techniques

Three multivariate statistical techniques (Multiway Principal Component Analysis, Multiway Partial Least Squares, and Stepwise Linear Discriminant Analysis) and one artificial intelligence method (Artificial Neural Networks) were evaluated to detect and predict early abnormal behaviors of wine fermentations. The techniques were tested with data of thirty-two variables at different stages of fermentation from industrial wine fermentations of Cabernet Sauvignon. All the techniques studied considered a pre-treatment to obtain a homogeneous space and reduce the overfitting. The results were encouraging; it was possible to classify at 72h 100% of the fermentation correctly with three variables using Multiway Partial Least Squares and Artificial Neural Networks. Additional and complementary results were obtained with Stepwise Linear Discriminant Analysis, which found that ethanol, sugars and density measurements are able to discriminate abnormal behavior.