Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/101495
COVER STORY THE LEADING INTERNATIONAL TRADE FAIR THAT REALLY SHOWS EVERYTHING. T ia G avin Celia Welch St. Helena, Calif. Position: Winemaking consultant, owner and winemaker of Corra Wines Wineries: Barbour Vineyards, Buccella, Hollywood & Vine Wine Cellars, J. Davies, Keever Vineyards, Kelly Fleming Wines, Lindstrom Wines, Scarecrow Wine Manages: 15,000 cases Education: Degree in fermentation science from the University of California, Davis Career harvests: 32 Winemaking mentor: Jon Engelskirger at both��Silverado Vineyards and Robert Pepi Winery C elia Welch, a Food & Wine magazine winemaker of the year, thinks broad issues like crop load and narrow ones like winery lighting are key quality issues. She advises optimizing uniformity of ripeness because it will greatly assist each section of the vineyard to give consistently wonderful flavor development. She adds, ���Maximizing quality almost always means limiting production, unfortunately, but a veraison-time thinning of fruit that is less ripe and/or less fully colored will improve the quality of the remaining fruit remarkably.��� Welch tries to make sure that each cluster has at least some dappled light hitting it (but not so much sun exposure that it bleaches or desiccates), and that fruit isn���t layered cluster-oncluster. She says, ���Plan to walk through the vineyard before harvest again to check for additional thinning work, and to sort the fruit once it hits the winery.��� She thinks too many winemakers overlook the cleanliness of the winery. ���Keeping a production facility clean and organized not only keeps the wines microbiologically sound but also leads to an overall winery philosophy of being detail-oriented.��� It is tough to enforce cleanliness standards if a facility has poor lighting, drains that don���t work well, and so on, she says. ���Design or retrofit your facility to make cleaning it easy. Avoid clutter. Teach your interns to clean the hard-to-reach corners. Preventing microbial contamination is much easier than correcting it. Simply installing better lighting in your production areas can greatly improve wine quality.��� As the only event of its kind in the world, INTERVITIS INTERFRUCTA provides an overview of the technology of the complete process chain, from the crop to the end product. www.intervitis-interfructa.de Cultivation and harvesting technology Filling and packaging technology Processing and process control Marketing and organisation INTERVITIS INTERFRUCTA International technology trade fair for wine, fruit, fruit juice and spirits 24 ��� 27 APRIL 2013 MESSE STUTTGART Win es & Vin es JA N UA RY 20 13 47 RZ_IVIF2013_Anz_WinesAndVines_01I13_89x251.indd 1 28.11.12 16:5