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WINERY & VINEYARD EQUIPMENT 66 WINES&VINES May 2018 The Wines & Vines Product Focus feature is not intended to provide a definitive listing of all available products in a particular segment or provide any comparative analysis, but rather serve as an overview of what's new or available and also of potential interest to readers as determined by the magazine's editorial staff. PARSEC Italian supplier Parsec, whose products are distributed in the United States by ATP Group, up- graded its SAEn micro-oxygen- ation and winemaking management system to include tank mixing. The Air Mixing M.I. system earned an honorable men- tion in the 2016 Vinitech-Sifel In- novation Awards, for improving the system the company first in- troduced in 2001. Those improve- ments included the overall design of the system such as placement of air injectors as well as en- hanced software. The supplier de- scribes the air movement through the tank as a wave that overturns and completely mixes the cap. Air mixing can be used in concert with other sensors of the SAEn system to run a complete fermen- tation protocol to meet certain quality and style parameters. atpgroup.com Vintuitive Manufactured in the Napa Valley by York Machine Works and de- signed by the winemaking equipment start up Vintuitive, the Lotus is a patent-pending pumpover irrigator. The Lotus was developed with CAD soft- ware and 3D printing to expe- dite the prototype process. Built with 304 stainless steel and other food-grade materials, the Lotus is a fluted spinning disk that is positioned beneath a standard pumpover rig. As wine cascades onto the disk it spins and the fluted channels spray the wine over the cap in a uni- form, even pattern. The Lotus is available in three diameter sizes and with the option of three or four flutes. Vintuitive claims what sets its device apart is there is no "hot spot" or heavy concentration of wine flow be- neath the irrigator. The company also produces an attachment, so the Lotus can be used on square tanks and can be used with a 3-piece aerator that the com- pany calls the Ace Venturi. vintuitivewmt.com RS RANDALL AND CO. Punchdown equipment special- ist RS Randall and Co. in Bris- bane, Calif., introduced a new device built for small-tank fer- mentations. Owner Chris Ran- dall said he designed the device for a winery in Washing- ton where stainless steel "seed bins" are a popular pick for red wine fermentation. The device rests on a stainless-steel frame that the operator rolls over bins. Powered by compressed air, the device glides along the frame to cover the entire sur- face of the cap. The device and frame can be disassembled for storage or transport. rsrandallandco.com Pulsair Founded in 1983, Pulsair Sys- tems produces tank mixing equipment for a variety of in- dustries and conducted its first winery trial in 1988. The com- pany describes its air mixing process as "Pneumatage." It can deliver compressed air or an inert gas to wet and turn a cap. The company produces equip- ment that ranges from small, portable units to elaborate sys- tems that can control more than 100 tanks from a single touch- screen. The company recently launched a new Wine Cart that features a "drain and press" program in the control screen to launch a sequence of com- pressed air bubbles to gently liquefy and break up the cap. Most of the pomace can then be pumped out of the tank to the press, reducing the amount of time workers have to spend in a tank digging them out. pulsair.com current system." Beckwith said the system allows cap management to be adjusted for every stage of the fermentation curve as well as for variety and winemaking style, and it can run a mixing cycle at 3 a.m. when the lights are off and the winery is empty. As a custom crush operation, it also provides a whole other set of data to provide clients. "It gives you a log of everything that has happened to that wine," he said. He also saw a significant improvement in emptying tanks. What had taken up to 2 and half hours was reduced to about an hour and requires far fewer workers and no dig outs. The winery processed about 14,000 tons n 2017, and Beckwith said he hopes to retrofit 14 more tanks with the Parsec system. Using the wine's energy Evan Schneider of the company Vintuitive has a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford and a bachelor's in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Using his experience in CAD and 3D printing he said he evaluated 30 different patterns for a pumpover device before settling on one he introduced in 2012 called the Lotus. "It uses the energy of the wine flow to rotate itself," he said of the Lotus. "It creates a uniform pattern without creat- ing a mist and bigger droplets that don't bruise the wine." Schneider has also developed an attachment to optimize the device's throw pattern for square tanks, either stainless steel or concrete. The square or circle attachments also help modulate the flow of a winery's pumpover equipment to further ensure a consistent pattern. John Hazak, winemaker at Beaulieu Vineyard, said most of the tanks at BV now have a dedicated Lotus and he added the uniformity of the devices helps ensure fermentation goes as desired. "If you have consistent, even coverage during pumpovers and eliminate the human error and chance that an irrigator might get stuck, there is a good chance that extraction and temperature management are happening as you want them to," he said in an email to Wines & Vines. "With the traditional swing-arms, they are more finicky and likely to get stuck because they were installed slightly unbalanced or bumped by someone during an addition. Sometimes, it was just a matter of some grapes drying out in the pipe and preventing normal flow," Hazak said. Fermenting in bins or small tanks means doing punchdowns. Doing many such small lots means an intern or two has to spend hours doing the strenuous work of managing each small cap. Punch- down equipment specialist RS Randall and Co. recently unveiled a new punchdown device designed for such fermentations. Owner Christopher Randall developed the device for a winery in Washing- ton where small stainless steel "seed bins" holding 1.5 tons are commonly used for red wines. "I think it's an ideal solution that will do a thorough punchdown, while at the same time be easy to use and safe for the operator," Randall said. A mobile air-mixing cart by Pulsair.