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S t. Helena, Calif.—An optical sorter could easily be the next de rigueur ac- cessory on the well-financed crush pad of a premium winery, but some winemakers aren't convinced. The inaugural Innovation + Quality confer- ence held March 4 at Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena featured a panel discussion by wine- makers as well as a comparative tasting of wines made with fruit that had undergone optical sorting versus control wines made from g r a p e s t h a t d i d n o t p a s s t h r o u g h t h e machines. Billed as the first "forum for ultra-premium wineries," the event, which was produced by Wine Business Monthly, drew a crowd of more than 1,000 exhibitors and winemakers. In ad- dition to a tradeshow, the event featured sev- eral sessions about viticulture, winemaking and the latest academic research. Wines & Vines and Wine Business Monthly are both part of Wine Communications Group. The tasting and panel discussion, held in Krug's barrel room, featured Dan Kosta, founder of Kosta Browne Winery; Bob Bertheau, head winemaker at Chateau Ste. Michelle; Doug Fletcher, vice president of wine- making for Terlato Wine Group, and Stacy Vogel, winemaker at Miner Family Winery. Vogel said she rented a Pellenc optical sorting machine from Walsh Vineyard Management to use for a trial on Pinot Noir from the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA in Monterey County, Calif. The resulting wines do not taste that much different, she said. During sorting, the optical machine kicked out mostly raisins, and Vogel said the rejected material filled about one bin out of 20 total. "There actually wasn't a whole lot that was taken out," she said. Bertheau said the Vitisort machine manu- factured by Key Technology was particularly valuable when a vineyard had been struck by a hailstorm that ravaged grapes on one side of the trellis. The machine accurately spat out all the grapes that had been punctured and dehy- drated by hailstones. "It's a perfect use for hail-damaged fruit," he said. But like any piece of equipment, Bertheau said it takes some time to get to know how best to operate it. He said vintage conditions as well as variety and vineyard all need to be taken into account when calibrating a sorter. Fletcher also rented a Pellenc machine for the 2014 harvest. He said he wanted to deter- mine if the machine was necessary when there hadn't been any challenges in the vineyard. He said during the 2010 vintage an optical sorter had been a "godsend" when it handled grapes that suffered severe sunburn. "Do we need to optical sort in a good year? That's our ques- tion," he said. During his trial, Fletcher set the machine to be as selective as possible to remove every raisin, jack or other piece of MOG on a lot of Cabernet Sauvignon. The two wines tasted slightly different, and Fletcher said the opti- cally sorted wine tasted a bit fruiter. "The les- son for us is, maybe we won't stress about stem-jacks so much," he said. —Andrew Adams Winemakers Debate the Merits of Optical Sorting "Do we need to optical sort in a good year? That's our question." —Doug Fletcher, Terlato Wine Group FPO When Ben Banks with Sovereign Estate Wine in Waconia, Minnesota, was looking for a way to quickly print and apply their wine labels, he turned to Primera's LX900 Color Label Printer and AP362 Label Applicator. "There are a lot of times when we're doing a very small run, a test batch or special reserve, where we're not going to print 2000 labels. It just made sense to have our own label printer here. We like to turn things around quickly and by keeping it in house, we get better quality and we don't have extras. We print just what we need. We had learned the hard way that hand labeling is not the way to go. We picked up the applicator and it work perfectly. We don't have to worry about misalignments. That's a big thing because when people are looking at wine on the shelf, the more consistent it looks, the higher quality it's perceived. People buy more of it." www.primeralabel.com | 1-800-797-2772 | 763-475-6676 ©2015 Primera Technology, Inc. Primera is a registered trademark of Primera Technology, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. It's really fast and the colors have always been right where I want them. " " Watch the case study: www.primeralabel.com /SovereignEstateWine