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The North American wine industry recognizes the importance of a laboratory quality assurance system to the wineries and the costs associated with poor measurement performance. Proficiency testing is an important piece in any laboratory's quality system. In recognition of this, the American Society for Enology and Viticulture (ASEV) has committed to a formal program of quality assurance testing for the wine industry. The two major goals of this program are to allow wine industry laboratories a high degree of confidence in their measurements and to establish reliable measurement techniques. The initial trial of the interlaboratory program was conducted in 1999; since then the ASEV - CTS Wine Interlaboratory Testing Program has been operated annually. ASEV's Laboratory Proficiency Testing Guidance Committee provides advice and assistance in the conduct of the program. Testing is conducted three times a year, providing laboratories with an on-going quality assurance tool for the evaluation of their performance.
Analysis Techniques
Each participant is sent two 750mL bottles of similar wines for testing in his or her laboratory. Labs have the option to measures at least ten chemical properties for each wine using their laboratory's normal assay for each property. Results from all laboratories are returned to CTS by a specified Data Due Date. CTS analyzes the data and issues individual and group reports to all participants.
The analysis of laboratory data is based on consensus statistics, comparing each laboratory's measurements to the Grand Mean for that property. In addition, the property measurements for both wines are analyzed together (bi-variate analysis) to evaluate the ability to make consistent measurements. Finally the results are shown on a two-sample plot with a control ellipse; this graphical representation is a powerful analysis tool describing the nature and magnitude of the difference between a lab's results and the consensus results.
For a chart of the types of wine used in past rounds of testing as well as the research properties for the round click here. |
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