Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/629061
February 2016 WINES&VINES 65 TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT FAMILY OF TANK CLEANING PRODUCTS www.cloudinc.com 8784-Cloud-Products-Ad-(3.5x4.875).indd 1 10/6/15 1:31 PM must pump and 4-inch hose. White wine grapes either undergo cluster sorting and head to the press or get destemmed and sit in tanks for a while to encourage aroma development before press- ing. The whites ferment in stain- less steel tanks or barrels. Stacey has managed two har- vests at Cairdean and said one person can handle a workflow of about 2.5 tons per hour. By the time the last of the fruit is hitting the final sorting table, the fork- lift driver has time to stack the clean bin and dump another loaded one to start the process once more. The cellar contains 36 stain- less-steel tanks of varying sizes from Criveller as well as a bank of open-top tanks. All of the closed- top red fermentors feature fixed pumpover pipes and their own pumps, and they are linked to the VinWizard system. Each tank is also fitted with a temperature probe that runs its entire length or through the entire volume of must when the tank is filled. Automation and remote control Snaking through the epoxy-coated walls and concrete floors of the winery are miles of conduit for Category 5 cable linking together the VinWizard system, which al- lows a winemaker to set a fermen- tation management protocol for each tank based on time, tempera- ture and other parameters. "It will allow you to program an entire cycle from the very beginning," Stacey said. He chose to equip the tanks with small screw pumps, believing they are a bit gentler on the wine. "They're also variable-speed driven, so I can control the speed of the sprinkler through VinWiz- ard," he said. "If you're at the peak of fermentation, and you really want to move a lot of juice, you can crank the speed all the way up. And if you're just looking to get the cap wet, you can throttle the speed all the way down." The racking valves of each fer- mentor also feature screens to block out skins and seeds during The winery is equipped with a Labconco unit with a downdraft hood and UV light for microbial plating.