Barcelona/London, Aug 4 (DPA) Spanish scientists have developed an ‘electronic tongue’ for rapid assessment of age and variety of wine, Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry said Monday.

The handheld device, which was described in the chemistry journal The Analyst, has six sensors capable of detecting wine components such as acid, sugar and alcohol.

The tongue, which can be ‘trained’ to taste new types of wine, was expected to avoid time-consuming laboratory processing to detect fraud.

It was invented by scientists at the Barcelona Institute of Microelectronics.