(676d) Engineering Wine

In this paper, we illustrate a new methodology for the development of new products as applied to wine making. We discuss the case of a Pinot Noir wine. This methodology was presented in the 2005 AIChE meeting. We developed a consumer preference function that allows connecting market survey results to wine properties and therefore be used in pricing-demand models. Fortunately, the manipulation of consumer satisfaction has little effect on many manufacturing costs, but it is strongly connected to aging. Based on the consumer model and the pricing model, we constructed a profit maximization model. Such problem renders the wine characteristics to target, the selling price and the capacity of the manufacturing plant simultaneously.