Constrained wine blending

Abstract

Assemblage consists in blending base wines in order to create a target wine. Recent developments in aroma analysis allow us to measure chemical compounds impacting the taste of wines. This chemical analysis makes it possible to design a decision tool for the following problem: given a set of target wines, determine which volumes must be extracted from each base wine to produce wines that satisfy constraints on aroma concentration, volumes, alcohol contents and price. This paper describes the modeling of wine assemblage as a non linear constrained Min-Max problem (minimizing the gap to the desired concentrations for every aromatic criterion) efficiently handled by the Ibex interval branch and bound. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.