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WINERY & VINEYARD EQUIPMENT June 2016 WINES&VINES 39 custom-crush clients keep close tabs on their wines. He said the program could be adjusted for each wine lot by the number of pumpov- ers, length and temperatures. "It will allow you to program an entire cycle from the very beginning," Stacey said. At the new Comstock Wines facility in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma County, the own- ers installed a TankNet system for tempera- ture control and monitoring (see the April 2016 issue). The system will also issue a text or email if there are any sudden changes in tank temperature—or if a tank temperature is no longer within a preset range. "We're able to adjust temperatures within each of these rooms as well as for each tank remotely from a phone," winemaker Chris Russi said. While the 12 new Westec open-top tanks at Benovia are equipped with valve screens to make pumpovers easier, the preferred way to manage caps is with punchdowns. Sullivan, the wine- maker, said he prefers the extraction and tannin profile from punchdowns and purchased two pneumatic plungers by "punchdown guru" Chris Randall of R.S. Randall and Co. in Brisbane Calif. The punchdown devices at Benovia are sus- pended over the tank tops by two rails and set on multiple axes of motion, which makes it easy for cellar workers to reach every part of the cap. The plunger itself is slightly concave to ensure the pomace at the point of contact is forced down into the tank rather than just sliding off to the side. Real-time temperature information is relayed to a Gen II Super Control system by Refrigeration Technology Inc., which also installed the winery's heating and cooling glycol system. The tank information can be accessed via a monitor in the winery lab or through a smartphone and can be incorpo- rated with Winemaker's Database. Concrete is becoming quite popular, especially for wineries that produce Rhone varieties. These "tulipe" tanks are imported from Italy by iPakWine.