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84 WINES&VINES November 2016 WINEMAKING I last wrote about several laboratory analy- ses testing for important wine and grape constituents using enzymatic protocols measured spectroscopically in April 2014. (See "Ramping Up Your Winery's Lab.") Since that time, Megazyme introduced a new spec- trophotometer called the MegaQuant Wave. In addition to this new entrant designed for small to medium-sized wineries, two other instru- ment producers are competing in this segment of the market. The instruments are discussed in the order of price of market entry; check with each manufacturer for their exact costs. Prior to the introduction of purpose-built instruments, incidental users of enzymatic analysis had to use basic spectrophotometers. These instruments had significant limitations, not the least of which was that the user had to do the calculations by hand and use equations that many in the wine industry did not feel comfortable computing. The harbinger of the effort to supply a purpose-built, small-format enzymatic analysis instrument for smaller wineries was the Monza analyzer from Randox. This instrument was featured in the April 2014 Wines & Vines article mentioned above. Astoria-Pacific, another company in this market area, has offered a larger format, purpose-built system for many years that is a step up in sophistication from the Randox Monza. It has an auto sampling system and is useful for wineries that have a higher volume of analyses on a regular basis. In the past, the most cost-effective means of analyzing wine constituents using enzymes was to buy a simple spectrophotometer such as the Spec 20, originally produced by Bausch & Lomb but now sold by Thermo-Scientific. The key to this instrument's operation was a diffraction grating that split the incoming light source into discrete narrow bands of light (10 nm or less) and measured by a pho- tometer. This instrument was designed to study between 940 nm and 340 nm wavelengths of light. For many enzymatic analyses, the most Advances in Enzymatic Analysis Technology Small-format instruments now available to maximize accuracy and reliability for the wine industry By Richard Carey BARBARA SUMMER