Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/1044116
November 2018 WINES&VINES 85 PRACTICAL WINERY & VINEYARD WINEMAKING lab manager at Bin to Bottle in Napa, Calif., advises to "see what is available, and how that can fit into your winery's needs." Dan Berglund, assistant winemaker at A to Z Wineworks, adds, "For every piece of equipment you add, try to make sure it is going to be really reliable." Be sure to consider: Investment and operating cost. It is easy to get caught up in the investment price of a new tool. In the lab, though, the operating cost is just as important. Sometimes the least expensive tool to implement today is not the least expensive tool to operate, particularly as the size of a winery grows. If your plan is to grow quickly, set yourself up to handle your projected production. Consider how often you will want to measure each parameter chosen to be important in step one. How many wines you will be monitoring in this and future vintages. Consider the total cost of ownership: investment cost, cost of testing, cost of con- sumables and maintenance. Time per test and cost of labor. This ties in closely with investment versus operating cost of a tool. Time is money, so the longer it takes to measure an analyte, the more expen- sive that measurement becomes. Who will be running these tests? What is the cost of labor? What else could they accomplish if their lab work was more efficient and took less time? Consider return on investment. Do the time savings (or decreased operating cost) make up for the investment cost? Accuracy, precision (repeatability) and sensitivity. "If you are getting numbers that are wildly inaccurate and then making deci- sions based on those, then that is worse than not having a number at all," Berglund says. To his point, quality control is all about mak- ing good decisions in the cellar. If the mea- surement technology you are considering cannot produce accurate, repeatable data, it has no benefit. Having no data will result in cautious decisions. Wrong data will result in mistakes. Sensitivity is defined as the limit of detec- tion for an analytical method. Ease of use and training. How easy is this method to run? Is it user-friendly? What are the sources of human error? Will two dif- ferent people be able to obtain the same re- sults? How easy will it be to train someone on a measurement method? How frequent is calibration for each measurement method? How much time does it take? Technical support. When you have a question or if something goes wrong, whom will you call? What methods will they use to support you and answer your questions? Will you be speaking to a new person every time? Does the company have any specific wine expertise? Step four: Consider your finances and Invest in the best measurement technol- ogy available. Time to put your research into action! You have determined what you want to measure, how often, and the possible ways to do it. Invest in the best measurement tech- nology you can. "Do not underestimate the value of the lab," says Lauren Wheeler, assistant wine- maker at Penner-Ash Wine Cellars. "Do not stick it in some dark corner somewhere. You are getting so much important information from it. It should be treated as one of the more important places in a winery. ... If you are going to have a lab, it is critical to try to do it right from the beginning. We spend a lot of time in there. That is where all of our big cellar decisions are made. It is im- portant for us to have that space be enjoy- able and respected." Step five: Let your lab equipment work for you and start seeing the results in the wine. You have done your research and made decisions. Now it is time to reap the benefits! The best solution will give you ac- curate and repeatable data that you can use to make timely cellar decisions, be user- friendly and efficient, have the lowest cost of ownership possible without sacrificing quality data, and will come with lifetime and easily accessible support. Part two: How easy it is to analyze using an automated system Case study: Moving from manual to auto- mated enzymatic, colorimetric testing. One example of a lab upgrade that could work for you is moving from manual to auto- mated enzymatic testing. The test is per- formed by creating an enzymatic reaction in a wine sample with reagents. A spectro- photometer reads the absorbance of the wine sample as the reaction is occurring, and the change in absorbance before and after the reaction is proportional to the concentration of the analyte being mea- sured. Common analytes measured this way include glucose and fructose, malic acid and acetic acid, to name a few. It is a direct measurement method, and each analyte will have its own dedicated reagents. Enzymatic testing is a flexible tool that opens up the possibility of measuring many analytes in a wine lab to deliver answers in time for important cellar decisions. For many wineries it is a tool that is used every day. Penner-Ash Wine Cellars, Bin to Bottle, Tes- tarossa Winery and A to Z Wineworks all utilize a Y15 automated enzymatic analyzer (150 tests per hour capacity) and reagent kits produced by BioSystems and provided in the U.S. by Admeo Inc. throughout the entire winemaking process, from grape to bottle and beyond. The Y line of analyzers comes from Bio- Systems, a partner of the California-based company Admeo. Admeo serves the North American market with BioSystems' Food Quality line with a focus on enology. Bio- Systems, based in Barcelona, Spain, has been in business for 36 years and has a dedicated enology department within its food quality division. They produce enzymatic reagents, analyz- ers, standards and controls. The reagents produced within BioSystems' internal quality- control system with ISO certification have been created by the company's internal re- search-and-development department around the wine matrix, a composite of the chemical components in wine. Here is how these wineries have benefited from automating this testing: Confidence in cellar decision-making "We do so much tasting here," says Wheeler at Penner-Ash Wine Cellars, "but at the end of the day it is nice to look back at the data to justify why we are going to make the ad- justments to wine that we will make. We do a lot of trials at Penner-Ash. We like to fully understand what is happening. You can run a trial, but if you do not have data to under- stand it, you can only do so much with the little information you have." "When you have such a big investment in A to Z wines (production of 350,000 cases per KEY POINTS The winery lab should provide actionable information to facilitate confident and timely winemaking decisions as well as early damage prevention in the cellar. Lab tools should be accurate, produce re- peatable results, efficient, reliable, cost- effective and user-friendly. When choosing lab equipment, it is impor- tant to keep in mind total cost of owner- ship, return on investment and support. Technology available for winery labs has come a long way, and automated solu- tions, such as automated enzymatic test- ing, can provide vast benefits for improving winery quality control while de- creasing time input. Having no data will result in cautious decisions. Wrong data will result in mistakes.