Wines & Vines

July 2018 Technology Issue

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WINEMAKING TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT 34 WINES&VINES July 2018 nance and has internal washing nozzles that make it easy to clean in five minutes, Starr said. The destemmer discharges to a berry-sorting shaker table that was made by Burgstahler Machine Works, which is located practically next door in St. Helena. An air knife blows MOG out and away from the stream of berries and can be adjusted minutely to suit the winemaker's level of pickiness. Cameron showed photos from the 2017 harvest of a small bin full of raisins that the air knife deftly knocked out of the fruit flow. A sump catches any free-run juice at this stage, but Starr says she rarely uses it. A second, taller elevator made by Burgstahler lifts the whole ber- ries from a Burgstahler hopper to the level of the catwalk on top of the stainless-steel fermentors made by Criveller. There are four 7-ton tanks, four 5-ton tanks and two 2-ton models. With a little maneu- vering of the processing line and proper aiming of the conveyor, the crew has been able to reach the top ports of the tanks on both sides of the central cellar with only the aid of a jerry-rigged plastic and duct- tape "snout" to bridge from the top of the conveyor to the tank lid on top. For 2018 they have a proper steel snout ready to go. Optimizing the tanks The jacketed Criveller tanks and the equipment with which they would be outfitted were a central part of Starr's lengthy dreaming/ planning process. Each fermentor is equipped with its own pump and pumpover system, a remov- able sieve-like cage that covers the tank outlet valve from inside to allow the juice out while keeping the skins inside, and a hot-water cleaning setup that's forceful enough to remove tartrates. These measures enable a no-entry policy on the tanks to insure safety. "The only reason to put your butt in the tank is to lock in the cage, but that's when the tank is empty," Starr said. "The tanks are heated and cooled by water only. Each tank is its own enclosed sys- tem. We save water, we save en- ergy, we save our energy, we save ourselves." Citing the wildfire smoke, Cameron pointed out that the tanks, as closed systems that don't use sumps for tank mixing, also were effective in excluding smoky air from entering them during pumpovers. The winemakers monitor and control the automated features via a TankNET web-based tempera- ture-control and fermentation- management system. The tanks use two types of must irrigators, a Lotus pumpover head by Vintui- tive Winemaking Tools and an- other type made by Burgstahler with a longer arm finished on each end with a spinning disk that spreads the must widely in the bigger tanks. Diemme Enologia press. Associate winemaker Evyn Cameron checks fermentation temperatures on the TankNet management system. YOUR ONE-STOP SHOP SINCE 1983! CONTACT US TODAY! 575 ird St. Bldg. A Napa CA 94559 707-255-6372 | napafermentation@aol.com www.napafermentation.com

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