Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/70673
W ine MAK in G TANK AND BARREL CLEANING MACHINES BARREL CLEANING MACHINES 100% CLEAN. EVERY TIME 80% LESS WATER 75% LESS TIME rom my short survey, costs per tank for automation might be anywhere from $300 to $1,500, depending on the choice of bells and whistles. Jim Conant of Logix estimates that a total winery automation system starts at $30,000 and up, though he's done half-million-dollar installations. Suppliers I talked to agreed that automation is probably off the table for very small operations, unless they are also very high end: Arkenstone, for example, makes only a few thousand cases of its own wines—a $120-per-bottle Cabernet blend and a $45 Sauvignon Blanc—but the winery also does custom crush. Very large wineries often prefer to do their own process engineering. The target range for automation lies somewhere between 25,000 and 150,000 cases. Most wineries implement automated systems one piece at a time—a few tanks as a trial, more the following year and eventually a move to environmental controls as well. Milz says that 40% of VinInfo's business is with repeat customers. As with any capital investment, the potential payoff comes over time: buy once, use indefinitely. Kaplan and Januik didn't have hard figures at hand, but both are convinced the systems will surely pay for themselves in decreased labor and energy costs and consistent wine quality. —T.P. but what does it cost? F lating ventilation to take advantage of cool night air. All the systems come with central brains, computer software of facility-wide environmental variables, checking for and altering barrel room temperature, humidity, CO2 Beyond tanks, automated winery systems can also take charge concentrations and regu- that tracks and records status information from the various sen- sors and hookups, displays it in a variety of intuitive formats and allows the winemaker/operator to control temperature and pro- cesses from a central console. Winemaker Mike Januik, who uses a Logix system at Woodinville, Wash.-based Januik/Novelty Hill, says automation makes his winemaking possible from "Europe or Peru." Sam Kaplan, meanwhile, prefers winemaking from his couch (where he connects to his VinWizard system, which runs in nine languages). The available systems are focused so far on functions inside the ROTARY IMPINGEMENT POWER 66 Wines & Vines FeBRUARY 201 1 cellar, but crush pad automation is on the horizon. One piece al- ready coming into place is automated and semi-automated sort- ing, which includes vibrating sorting tables that take care of most of the MOG when grapes are received and optical sorting technol- ogy (like that from Key Technology in Walla Walla), which grades grape berries by coloration and decides their fate accordingly. "The general public," says Markus Milz of Kreyer and VinInfo, "thinks winegrapes are harvested by hand, treaded by 21-year- old maidens with their feet and then the juice somehow runs into wooden barrels." Even though Kreyer—and Milz's own 500-year- old Milz-Laurentiushof estate winery—is headquartered in Ger- many's picturesque Mosel region, the approach to winemaking is anything but quaint. Values added Fans of automation (both winemakers and suppliers) cite a long list of advantages to embracing this non-traditional technology. WINEMAKING IS YOUR ART, TANK CLEANING IS OURS. FAST, EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE.