Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/543749
August 2015 P R A C T I C A L W I N E R Y & V I N E YA R D 65 W I N E M A K I N G each bottle to do an effective cleaning with nitrogen or water or both. If the nozzle does not enter the neck, it cannot blow anything out effectively. The opera- tor can select precise rinsing or blowing time required, conserving gas and/or water and providing maximum dripping time in the case of rinsing. The patented 56 MBF filling valves on the filler inject nitrogen gas directly into each bottle immediately prior to filling to guarantee 96% displacement of the ambi- ent air from every bottle. A D-ring on each filling valve provides a liquid seal inside the valve body that is very large in diameter to reduce wear. As the bottle is filling, the air (gas) in the bottle is allowed to escape through the center of the fill tube and is evacu- ated from the machine through a sepa- rate channel so the gas does not go to the filler bowl. The stopping point for filling does not involve sucking up over- fill volume that could potentially lead to contamination in the filler bowl. The N ew bottling equipment has been installed at the LangeTwins Winery and Vineyards in Acampo, Calif., to expand bulk wine, custom winemaking and juicing services in addition to wine grape pro- duction and processing of LangeTwins' own wines. A modular and all-stainless steel Superbloc was built by MBF Bottling Technologies in Italy along with other machines that were installed to begin bottling wine in early 2015. The bottling line has a maximum potential capacity of 200 750 ml bottles per minute. The entire Superbloc is electroni- cally controlled. The Superbloc "cabin" is enclosed with an LED lighting sys- tem and sterile positive laminar airflow. LangeTwins can handle 187 ml to 1.5-liter bottle sizes. The current system is con- figured for 18 different package formats. Important components of the bottling line are: A wine microfiltration and clean-in- place (CIP) wine skid has two eight- cartridge housings that hold the pre- and final water filters (0.65 and 0.45 micron) that feed water to the sanitation cycle and bottle rinser. Two single-cartridge filter housings contain a pre- and final filter for the recirculation water that is returning from the bottle rinser and rinser reservoir basin. To minimize water usage, the recovered bottle rinser water is recirculated through a rinser water-recovery tank that is drained and refreshed every two hours. There are three 12-cartridge filter housings on the wine skid. Currently, only two of the housings are used for filtering wine with 0.65- and 0.45-micron filters supplied by Scott Labs. The third housing is currently empty with the capability to install an extra set of pre- or final filters in the event one of the filter housings fouls or fails integrity testing. There are three heat exchangers built into the wine skid. The first heat exchanger allows room temperature water to be heated (via steam) to boil- ing water in a single pass allowing any set temperature within a 5° C range, providing hot water on demand with an endless supply. A second heat exchanger allows for recovery of spent/recovered hot water to heat incoming cool/room temperature water for maximum calo- rie recovery/efficiency. The third heat exchanger allows for cold wine to be heated to a set temperature within a 5° C range prior to bottling. 58° F is the stan- dard wine temperature at bottling. There is 146 feet of conveyor between an Orton uncaser and bottle rinser that is a result of the uncaser discharging bot- tles onto the conveyor toward the opera- tors who manually depaletize the cases onto a feed conveyor. If there is a downed bottle at the discharge of the uncaser, the operators will be aware and able to react quickly to remove the downed bottle. The 48 mobile nozzle bottle rinser is the first component of the MBF Superbloc. The bottle rinser can do either a water rinse and nitrogen blow or only blow- clean the bottles. The nozzles insert approximately 50 mm into the neck of New bottling equipment installation Don Neel, Editor BY LANGETWINS, ACAMPO, CALIF. Wine microfiltration and clean-in-place wine skid. Front part of Superbloc includes bottle rinser, filler, corker and screw capper.