Collector's Edition WINES&VINES 49
COLLECTOR'S EDITION
Grape sorting
Quicker, cleaner and better
During the 2018 harvest, a French company debuted a robotic grape sorter at Alpha Omega Winery
in Napa Valley. Driven by an optical sorter, the robot employed a series of arms with a suction
gripper on the end to reach down and pull material other than grapes (MOG) off a conveyor car-
rying berries that had already been destemmed and sorted (see Product News, page 24). The robot
is the latest innovation in sorting technology and shows how far grape sorting has come in recent
decades. Sorting has evolved from simple shaker tables and conveyors to elaborate, multistep
processes that can involve hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment. Increasingly that equip-
ment is being managed with as few workers as possible, because the machines are getting better
and quicker and there are fewer workers available for sorting. The most significant development
has been optical sorting, which employs high-speed cameras and computers to almost instantly
analyze a flow of destemmed berries; identify MOG, raisins and unripe grapes; and then activate
air jets that push the material out of the grape flow and into waste channels. Optical sorters have
by Bucher Vaslin and Pellenc been popular picks for many high-end wineries, but the American
company WECO's Vitisort machine has proved to be a competitive and popular machine as well.
