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May 2016 WINES&VINES 45 PRACTICAL WINERY & VINEYARD WINEMAKING atpgroup The good news: For more inFormation, call atP services at (707) 331-2170 or email us at: services@atPGrouP.com The rain over the last couple of months has been a welcome relief here in California, especially after so many years of drought. All this rain can cause equipment parts to rust, membranes to corrode. Water leaking into sensitive areas can eventually lead to major repairs down the line if the leakage isn't stopped and the parts remain unrepaired and unprotected. ATP can perform services on your equipment that can protect it from the elements. All you have to do is call ATP Services and set up a maintenance schedule. ATP's skilled technicians will do the rest, keeping your equipment primed, protected and ready for the next harvest. The good news: The bad news: El NiÑo. bottle, the air is moved inside the filler bowl above the wine and mixed with nitrogen. This application eliminates the turbulence created by injecting gas into the bottle and reduces excessive gas use. An advantage of evacuating the bottle of air after filling is the removal of oxygen from the headspace and preventing the creation of pressure in the bottle due to the "piston" effect by inserting the closure. After insertion, pressure in the bottle should preferably be in equilibrium with the atmosphere. The vacuum level can be ad- justed to compensate for temperature differ- ences and reduce pressure leak risks. The lack of information in this area makes this procedure less reliable than adjusting the fill level for wine temperature compensation. This method seems less reliable than adjust- ing fill levels because it places much respon- sibility on the performance of bottling equipment. Based on the filler manufacturer's recom- mendation, the vacuum should be adjusted at levels close to -500 millibar (-6.75 psi) at the filler and -70 millibar (1 psi) at the corker. Nomacorc suggests monitoring pressure in the ullage (headspace) approximately 10 min- utes after bottling to ensure it is between -300 millibar (-4.35 psi) and 300 millibar (4.35 psi). Rather than using the vacuum pump gauges that may not accurately reflect the actual ul- lage pressure, the company recommends man- ual measurement through the closure into the headspace with a pressure gauge attached to a thin needle. 19 According to veteran bottling consultant George Crochiere, a proper setup supplying a vacuum at corking can help reduce the amount of oxygen absorption into the wine. 20 In this study, the lowest HSO levels were registered when -102 to -135 millibar of vacuum were applied at corking. Increas- ing the vacuum did not necessarily reduce HSO, as observed in audits 1 and 13, where -677 millibar and -169 millibar were ap- plied respectively. The absence of vacuum or a reduced level (-13.5 millibar in audit 10) was instead associated with an increase of HSO. Summary of best practices for managing TPO at bottling Regular measurements of both DO and HSO, preventive maintenance and closure inspec- tion are essential components of efficient bottling. Keeping constant low levels of TPO during bottling is challenging and closely related to good cellar practices. Key points of the bottling process that have impact on TPO are represented in the illustra- tion on page 43. Some of the best practices to manage DO and HSO during bottling are sum- marized in the table "Best Practices for Manag- ing TPO at Bottling." Hend Letaief was assistant professor of wine chemistry at California State University, Fresno. She earned a master's degree in viticulture and enology from Mont- pellier SupAgro in France and a Ph.D. in food science and technology from the University of Turin in Italy. She has eight years of diverse and practical international experience in enology and is the author of "Winemak- ing Process In Valorization of Winemaking By-Prod- ucts" and Texture Analysis for the Definition of Wine Grape Quality. Letaief has joined Enartis USA as technical director. This work was funded by Nomacorc and benefited from the support of the California wine industry. The author is grateful to Bertille Goyard from AgroSup Dijon and Pauline Martinaggi from ESA Angers for conducting the experiments as well as the Wine Sci- ence Forum advisory board and Ashley Heisey for supervising the audits and providing technical support to the project. The references for this article are available online at winesandvines.com