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44 WINES&VINES March 2018 PACKAGING New for 2018! Precision In-Line Carbonation No more sparging resulting in loss of aromatics Add freshness to your wine Control levels of CO 2 precisely prior to bottling CO 2 is instantly dissolved Option to remove dissolved oxygen during carbonation Add as little as 0.5 g/l with in-line CO 2 monitoring Mobile services off ered include Crossfl ow Filtration, Smoke Reduction, VA Reduction, EA Reduction, pH Adjustment, Wine Concentration, Alcohol Adjustment, Ultrafi ltration 707 552 2616 www.vafiltration.com Ryan. The company maintains a fully automated bottling line in Modesto, Calif., and labels are ap- plied during the process. Reusable and recyclable, a four-stack of StackTek wines is about two-thirds the weight of a single glass 750-ml bottle, and about the same size (it fits in the fridge). The containers are made in California. How do you sell these things? Wine displays have not changed much in recent decades, but these small packages are forcing retail- ers to make adjustments to capi- talize on the new market. Curtis Mann, director of wine, beer and spirits for Sacramento- based Raley's Family of Fine Stores, offered his expert impressions. "We do have some free-standing dis- plays of cans, but the key is to get them in the cold box. Customers want an immediate consumption option," he said. "The other items are just placed in our (wine) set, and we will run promotions on them periodically." FILL 'EM CAREFULLY G 3 in Modesto, Calif., is both a bottle sup- plier and a bottling services provider. The company does not produce small size bottles, but it does fill a few thousand cases of 375 mls annually, according to Ron Varner, director of bottling and technical services. Varner cited these bottling pitfalls: • Cork finish issues are centered around head space. • A small bottle doesn't give much leeway. • The faster fill rate and smaller head space can make it harder to maintain consistent fill height. • Maintaining vacuum can also be more difficult. • Less headspace also means less room for wine expansion post-bottling. • Low wine bottling temperature (60° F or less) can lead to moisture wicking. • Setting the height of capping equipment can be tricky. Labeling can also pose problems, Varner said, due to the speed of the smaller bottles on the line. Rotary labelers work better than in-line labelers, which are trickier to set up. Varner's colleague Francois Margot from cork producer Diam added his thoughts: "Those small bottles are indeed challenging to run on a line. Early on, before filling, the bottles are much less stable than 750s. They are more likely to fall and get stuck on the line. Guid- ing equipment has to be specific and very well adjusted all along the line. "At filling, the wine level has to be very precisely monitored, since those little bottles usually have much less headspace. Overfilling will very quickly lead to cork push-up in case of higher temperature during transport or storage," Margot cautioned. One of the biggest challenges is that the wine ages very quickly in the small bottles. To preserve wine quality and freshness, oxygen management at bottling has to be very strict, and the closure oxygen transmission rate (OTR) should be tight. Diam has developed a specially adapted cork for 375-ml bottles: the Diam 10 44mm. It features very low OTR for optimal wine evolution, short length for head space manage- ment and high elasticity for push-up resistance.