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TE CHNOL OG Y Using Micro-Ox To Improve Wine Quality Winemakers and suppliers share advice about precise oxygenation By Andrew Adams A diffuser stone is connected to an oxygen line and lowered near the bottom of a stainless steel tank at Safe Harbor's wine storage and finishing plant. The spotless and modern warehouse, which opened in August 2007, is home to 250 tanks that range in size from 3,250 to 50,000 gallons based on increments of roughly one tanker truck load. Wine is not made at Safe Harbor, it is brought in and shipped out by truck. Founded in part by brothers Alan and Stephen Sullivan, who also started StaVin, Safe Harbor is a place where wine comes for final assembly. There's no crush pad or bottling line at Safe Harbor. Tanks, naked of gly- col jackets, are packed tightly in the temperature-controlled warehouse. For all that wine, there's a conspicuous lack of barrels. That's because at Safe Harbor almost all the wine is maturing with the use of Westec's OxBox micro-oxygenation system and StaVin oak alternatives. Winemaker and manager Joel Green declined to disclose who uses Safe Harbor, but he said the clients come from every segment of the industry, and the finished wine represents every rung of the retail price ladder. Wine has arrived at Safe S 30 Wines & Vines JULY 2012 afe Harbor, a wine warehouse located in the commercial area around Napa Airport, boasts one of the highest ratios of wine per square foot in the Napa Valley. Highlights • Most users of micro-oxygenation are finding success with color stabilization right after primary fermentation or by replacing or augmenting barrel aging. • Temperature, dosing rate and pressure are vital. Changes in any of these pa- rameters during a micro-ox regimen can cause huge fluctuations in the amount of oxygen being injected into the wine. • Winemakers should monitor micro-ox regularly, if not daily. Taste the wine as well as track dissolved oxygen, volatile acidity and SO2 levels. Harbor from Italy and Argentina, and it goes to nearly every wine region in North America. Green said Safe Harbor is usu- ally at 95% capacity. Central to Safe Harbor's business is providing a stable and secure environ- ment to mature wines with micro-oxy- genation. Done correctly with the use of oak alternatives, Green said it's possible to approximate barrel aging without the barrels. While there are still some ques- tions about the science of micro-oxygen- ation, suppliers offer a range of micro-ox equipment and advocate its use at nearly every stage of winemaking and for almost all types of wine including whites. Dr. Anita Oberholster, a cooperative extension specialist in enology with the University of California, Davis, said micro-ox is an option for managing qual- ity while reducing costs. "This is used to improve quality, not actually to fix a fault," she said. Oberholster acknowl- edged that there's a wide range of opinion about micro-ox among winemakers, say- ing some regard it as a useful tool while others say it's complete hogwash. The use of micro-ox to improve or intensify color has been demonstrated, but Oberholster told Wines & Vines that it's less clear how effective the tool can be for replacing barrels. She said it's not that certain how much oxygen actually perme- ates a barrel, and in fact most oxygen likely enters the wine during topping. She noted one 2010 study that com- pared the results of wine aged in a tank equipped with micro-ox and a combina- tion of new and used American oak bar- rels. While the researchers found that the wine aged in a similar fashion, ultimately all phOTOS: GundOlf pfOTenhauer