Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/877508
TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING October 2017 WINES&VINES 69 making equipment as well as all the catwalks and other metal fabrication work. The first table empties onto an elevated con- veyor that feeds the Bucher Vas- lin Delta Oscillys destemmer that shakes the berries free from their stems with a swinging cylinder. The berries then run along an- other table to a Delta R1 Vistalys optical sorter. The vibratory sort- ing tables and elevated conveyor are all custom-built Iso-Flo ma- chines by Key Technology. Donley said the crush pad is set up to be as meticulous, gentle and fast with processing as possible while also reducing the amount of labor needed. With everything up and running, she said the crush pad requires one dedicated forklift driver and another worker to keep an eye on everything, making sure it hums along smoothly at 3.5 tons per hour or slower. Kinsman said at rates much higher than that, the grapes begin to stack up on each other on the sorting belts, making it harder for the optical sorter to do its job of recognizing grape water berry and other less than ideal fruit. Araujo said he had resisted in- vesting in an optical sorter for years because he had doubts that a machine could do a comparable (let alone better) job than the skilled sorters who worked at Araujo Estate. For the new winery, however, he conceded to the tech- nology and now admits that the optical sorter does a better job and at a faster rate. "I have to say it's truly amaz- ing. The differences in the tech- nology over the decade are extraordinary," he said. "The bot- tom line is I never thought any- one or any machine could sort better than our ladies, but this sorts better and three times the speed, so we can process three times as fast." After running through the opti- cal sorter, the processed and sorted berries are collected in custom-built stainless steel sumps to transport the must to fermenta- tion tanks. The sumps, also made by Wolff, are moved by a forklift driver who carries them into the winery and then raises the sumps up over the top hatch of the stain- less steel fermentation tanks and hits an actuator to open a large butterfly valve powered by com- pressed air to drain the sump into the tank. "We're also using these for pressing, so when we're dig- ging out tanks we're digging straight into these," Donley said. Araujo and Kinsman first saw such bins in action at a winery in Bordeaux and brought the method back to Araujo Estate. The tech- nique replicates gravity feed to Bart Araujo (left) and Nigel Kinsman in the new winery.