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WINEMAKING Juice bubbles through the cap as a winemaker uses Pulsair technology to introduce compressed air to the fermentation. Mixing Tanks With Air Winemakers like Pulsair for cap management and mixing blends By Laurie Daniel uring the most recent harvest at Silver Mountain Vineyards in California's Santa Cruz Mountains, a compressor pumped air into hoses connected to three evenly spaced valves near the bottom of a 4,000-liter tank of fermenting Pinot Noir. There was a blub, blub, blub sound of air bubbles, then the fermenting juice erupted through the cap of skins at the top of the tank. It was Pulsair technology in action. Simply put, Pulsair uses large bubbles of compressed air or another gas to mix a tank. The bubble can be introduced from the top of a tank, using a probe, or through other mechanisms at the bottom of the tank. Wineries large and small use it for cap management—as a substitute or adjunct to pumping over or punching down in red wines—or to combine a blend. Jerold O'Brien, Silver Mountain's owner, likes Pulsair for several reasons and uses a portable unit on all his reds. "Rising bubbles of air are absolutely the most gentle way to mechanical- ly mix," says O'Brien, who doesn't use pumps at his 6,000-case winery. In addition, the process is less labor intensive than his other cap-management regimen, which he calls a "drain over" because the juice is drained from the tank into bins, which are hoisted with a forklift, then drained through a hose over the cap and back into the tank. D Not exactly new Pulsair technology was introduced to the wine industry about 25 years ago—the company calls its wine system "pneumatage"— but not much has been written about it. O'Brien and other 46 Wines & Vines MARCH 2012 winemakers who are fans of the process talk about how gentle it is, resulting in wines with supple tannins. Pulsair also allows winemakers to aerate the must, which helps with healthy fermen- tations, mitigates reduction issues and assists with even distribu- tion of any additions to the tank. Some say that the process even helps blow off excess alcohol. The technique of using a bubble of air to mix things was de- veloped about 30 years ago by Dick Parks, who was looking for a way to gently mix some salmon eggs. He went on to establish Pulsair Systems Inc., based in Bellevue, Wash., which now has customers in more than 40 countries and a variety of industries. The oil industry is Pulsair's biggest customer, but in 1985, Parks got in touch with Doug Gore, now executive vice president for Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, who at that time was red winemaker at Chateau Ste. Michelle in eastern Washington state. "For some reason, (Parks) got fixated on wine and grapes and (whether Pul- sair could) work in a winemaking context," Gore says. Gore says he tried Parks' device, which involved piping the compressed gas under stainless steel discs at the bottom of the tank, on some square, open-top concrete tanks, but it didn't work properly. "It's the geometry of it," Gore says. Pulsair did, however, work "wonderfully well" on some 2- to 3-ton open-top tanks. "That was the start of it," he says. Parks, meanwhile, experimented with the technology at some other wineries, refining it as he went along. Gore became wine- maker for Ste. Michelle's Columbia Crest, and when that winery installed some new stainless tanks, he got in touch with Parks. "We've used it ever since for mixing our large tanks" during