A great harvest isn't the only element of a successful Vintage - maintaining equipment will ensure machinery break down doesn't compromise grape quality or processing during this critical time of year.

Ask any winemaker what it takes to make a great wine and, chances are, they won't say it's an efficiently working boiler, but hot water is an essential ingredient in the winemaking process.

It's integral that all machinery should be tested leading up to vintage, so there aren't any nasty surprises - this means undertaking a combination of internal maintenance and specialised serving of equipment pre-vintage.

Travhotec specialises in the supply of Hot Water and Steam Boilers, Chillers and Heat Exchangers for the wine industry and, with nearly 30 years of industry experience are the ideal partner to service your equipment before Vintage.

Crossflow filtration has been around for years, but its potential for energy-efficiency and self-sufficiency is making it one of the biggest trends in wine making.

For wine makers, the need for filtration is a given. To produce a bottle of stable, great tasting wine somewhere along the winemaking process the batch needs to be filtered. The decision of which crossflow filtration system to use is a complex one, but many overlook an important but basic step in the filtration process: hot water.

Image: www.terravant.com

Crossflow filtration requires clean hot water that is readily available and can be quickly generated for one if not two consecutive sanitation flushes. The use of instant hot water units is common but not necessarily the best option.

Assuming manufacturing specification for a crossflow system requires the use of 850 litres of 65/700C water and, to achieve the best results, the flow needs to be consistently at the required temperature and volume then an instant hot water system may struggle to meet demand. A crossflow system like this would require a number of instant hot water units set up in series to achieve the required temperature and flow combination, generally resulting in a slower and less stable process.

'Using instant hot water units can slow flow rates

and add time to achieving sanitation,

whereas hot water storage systems

designed by Travhotec can alleviate this issue

and ensure there is no impact on productivity.'

The most desirable method is to have a volume of water which has been heated to the correct temperature and has the capacity to carry out the cycle twice. Should the sanitation process not be completed correctly or on time, then a second volume would be needed quickly, so a storing capacity for two washes is desirable.

Using instant hot water units can slow flow rates and add time to achieving sanitation, whereas hot water storage systems designed by Travhotec can alleviate this issue and ensure there is no impact on productivity.

Storing water can be more efficient because state-of-the-art condensing boilers can be used, offering considerable savings on gas consumption. When water is heated in a Travhotec system, no cold is

added so less energy is consumed during the sanitation process. In remote locations diesel boilers can be a viable alternative with storage systems. Furthermore, our systems can be used for high temperature sanitation in bottling lines and at low temperatures for safe and very efficient wine heating, adding to their appeal for winemakers.

There are concerns within the wine industry that instant hot water units and older copper-based hot water boilers, can contaminate water by leaching from the heating coil and in so contaminate the filters.

Systems designed by Travhotec ensure all sanitation hot water used in the sanitation process is only in contact with stainless steel, significantly reducing the risk of contamination.

With proper maintenance and servicing, Travhotec systems frequently last over 15 years, whereas an instant hot water unit would not have the same sort life expectancy. Another cost saving.

To discover how a Travhotec hot water system can benefit your winery's needs, contact us today.

Wine Industry Regional Networking Event

Clare Valley Country Club

Andreas Reisinger of Taylors Wines would like to invite you to the first in the WEA series of Regional Networking events.

As part of our inaugural networking event there will be short talks from industry experts Chris Travers of Travhotec and Jo Stagg of Programmed Property Services. Guests will then be invited to enjoy drinks and nibbles and a chance to catch up with other local industry colleagues.

Chris Travers - Owner and General Manager of Travhotec

With nearly 30 years experience supplying heating and chilling solutions to commercial clients, Chris has a wealth of knowledge in all aspects of the industry. Chris will be sharing observations from his projects, including the recent installation of grape juice concentrate equipment for a leading wine group.

Jo Stagg General Manager SA/NT at Programmed Property Services

With a passion and skill for influencing and inspiring people Jo leads large teams through challenging cultural change and economic pressure and is an advocate for diversity in the workplace. Jo has been speaking professionally for the last 15 years and her presentations of leadership and teamwork are always fun, engaging and inspiring. Jo will talk about 'Leading Teams'.

Andreas Reisigner Taylors Wines

As part of the Senior Management Team at Taylors Wines Andreas Reisigner is responsible for leading a cross-functional team, looking after the day to day operations and strategic planning within the manufacturing department. This includes procurement, new product development, production and supply chain management.

The Winery Engineering Association looks to create conversations about the industry and to grow a community of professionals who share their knowledge and passion. Winery Engineering encompasses the peripheral activities, design, supply, construction and process realisation that make winemaking possible from grape to glass.

Please join us at the Clare Country Club Tuesday May 12th from 4pm to 6pm

TO REGISTER PHONE: (08) 8240 3029 or CLICK HERE

The Winery Engineering Association looks to create conversations about the industry and to grow a community of professionals who share their knowledge and passion. Winery Engineering encompasses the peripheral activities, design, supply, construction and process realisation that make winemaking possible from grape to glass.

ACS Meeting News: Researchers zero in on flavor molecules, ponder ways to control them during production

By Lauren K. Wolf

If you’ve ever slapped $5.00 down on a bar to taste a winery’s offerings, you’ve likely been regaled with tales of the art of winemaking. While patrons clink their glasses and chatter about a vintage’s body, winemakers and their staff typically point out how grape quality, barrel aging, and a particular year’s weather contributed to their products’ flavors and aromas. Rarely do they mention monitoring their merlot’s pH or tracking the amount of methoxypyrazine that accumulated in their cabernet’s grapes. Science talk, in other words, is avoided like the plague.

“Consumers prefer it that way,” enologist Gavin L. Sacks recently told C&EN. “Part of the appeal of wine is the idea that the producer did not exercise complete control over the process.”

Indeed, many of the environmental factors that shape a wine’s sensory profile, including humidity and average rainfall, are out of a winery’s hands. But there are numerous points along a grape’s journey to becoming a wine where experts can—and do—scientifically intervene to influence the final beverage.

Wine researchers gathered last month to discuss some of these intervention strategies during a session held at the American Chemical Society national meeting in San Francisco. During the symposium, sponsored by the Division of Agricultural & Food Chemistry, enologists reported on their efforts to isolate wine’s flavor components and control them to make a better product.

“Grape growers and winemakers, they might give the illusion that they’re talking to the vines and just letting nature happen,” said Sacks, a professor at Cornell University and coorganizer of the symposium. “But there are stacks of periodicals in many of their offices—technical and peer-reviewed journals—and they read every detail.”

Scientists such as Sacks have long been trying to understand the interplay of a wine’s chemical components so that they can help winemakers achieve desired tastes and aromas. In the 1970s and ’80s, enologists began in earnest to analyze wines and correlate individual compounds with sensory attributes. Because of advances in analytical techniques, they managed to nail down many of the key molecules during the 2000s.

One researcher who’s made major contributions to this area of research is Thomas Hofmann, a food chemist at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). In San Francisco, he dazzled the audience by describing his team’s efforts to strip a wine down to its key flavor components—the ones that humans sense when they take a sip.

Nobody knows for sure exactly how many compounds a glass of wine comprises, Hofmann told C&EN. “But it’s definitely in the thousands.”

To zero in on the small group that dictates a wine’s flavor profile, Hofmann and his team rely on both analytical methods and a panel of volunteers trained over a two-year period to identify sensory attributes such as “sour” and “astringent,” which is a drying sensation in the mouth. In 2008, the researchers began their in-depth studies, using liquid chromatography to divide a high-quality Italian dry red wine, amarone, into molecular fractions. Their volunteers labeled each fraction as “sweet,” “mouthful”—a descriptor for richness—and so on.

Once the researchers had this information, they used mass spectrometry to identify the specific compounds in each fraction and finally “reengineered” a wine. To make this synthetic beverage, the researchers selected 80-some molecules from their fractions and added them to water at concentrations normally found in amarone. Working with the trained tasters, Hofmann and his team then removed a few compounds at a time until they were left with the 35 molecules that were sufficient to simulate the taste and feel of a real amarone (J. Agric. Food Chem. 2008, DOI: 10.1021/jf073031n and 10.1021/jf801742w).

According to Hofmann, these “orosensory” molecules are not all it takes to reconstitute amarone. Another 25 or 30 volatile compounds are required to describe its aroma—an important part of the overall experience of drinking a wine.

He and his team have continued using their so-called sensomics approach to investigate a multitude of other wines. They’ve found that the same 60 or so key aroma and taste molecules describe every wine. And what makes one wine taste like a merlot and another taste like a cabernet sauvignon is the difference in these key compounds’ concentrations. “That’s also why, even if you have a wine from the same winery this year and last year, they might taste similar but not identical,” Hofmann said. In the vineyard, “minor changes in the molecules’ concentrations are induced in the grapes by variations in temperature, humidity, and so on.”

Some wine researchers are now trying to understand how these types of environmental factors affect the chemical composition of grapes and, in turn, wine. At the ACS meeting, Hildegarde Heymann, an enologist at the University of California, Davis,presented her team’s study on the role a vineyard’s location plays in a wine’s aroma. The researchers used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze the volatile compounds emitted by about 40 malbecs from regions of California, such as Napa Valley, and regions of Argentina in the high-altitude Mendoza province. Then they mathematically correlated prominent aroma molecules with sensory data reported by a panel of trained odor experts.

Susan E. Ebeler, a member of the UC Davis team, told C&EN that the “cool” thing about this study is that all the malbecs were produced in the same way. Working with vineyards on both continents, the researchers ensured that the grape crushing, fermentation, and aging steps were as similar as possible between wines. This way, the team could tease out the molecular and sensory differences caused solely by where the grapes were grown, said Ebeler, also a coorganizer of the ACS meeting symposium.

The UC Davis team found that the Argentinian malbecs were sweeter and contained more alcohol than the Californian malbecs, which were more bitter (Food Chem. 2014, DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2013.07.085). They think a majority of the differences between the two types of wine have to do with the altitude at which the grapes were grown. Rainfall plays a smaller role. The team hopes this study will provide a jumping-off point for more in-depth investigations of how a wine’s chemical composition is influenced by its provenance.

Given that vineyard conditions such as rainfall help shape the tastes and aromas that ultimately appear in wine, researchers would also like to identify “what kinds of things we can do in the vineyard to impact a wine’s flavor profile,” Ebeler said.

Michael T. Cleary, director of chemistry at E. & J. Gallo Winery, in California, shared some thoughts with the audience in San Francisco on a few of these vineyard strategies. Gallo buys grapes from vineyards across California to make its vino, so it’s interested in why grape quality varies from estate to estate. Cleary and his team analyze grape composition daily and, on the basis of their experience, have come up with what they call objective measures of grape quality.

One of these measures is the amount of 3-isobutyl-2-methoxypyrazine found inside grapes. This volatile compound has a vegetal, bell pepper odor that, at high concentrations, is displeasing to consumers. Researchers, including Cornell’s Sacks, have determined that grapes exposed to direct sunlight accumulate less of the odorant than grapes in the shade.

Rather than filter the troublesome compound out of wine with substances such as charcoal—which might also remove beneficial molecules—Cleary suggested pruning leaves from vines to expose grape clusters to more direct light.

Another quality marker Cleary discussed at the ACS meeting is a wine’s tannin level. Tannins are polyphenols that cause a gritty sensation in the mouth by binding to salivary proteins there. Consumers enjoy tannins in red wines, but enologists have learned that just because a grape contains a lot of tannins doesn’t mean the corresponding wine will too.

Sacks and his team recently showed that the amount of tannins extracted during winemaking inversely correlates with the amount of protein on the cell walls within a grape’s flesh. This finding suggests that tannins bind so tightly to the proteins that they can’t release into the wine (J. Agric. Food Chem. 2014, DOI: 10.1021/jf5023274). To boost the tannin level in vino, Sacks suggested that winemakers might add a protease to the crushed grapes during the winemaking process to degrade the interfering proteins.

Once researchers have a better grip on which step in the wine manufacturing process generates which important flavor compound, they’ll be able to help winemakers improve their products, TUM’s Hofmann said. If the molecules and reactions that produce them are unknown, winemaking is just trial and error, “or art, as you might call it,” he said. By adding scientific know-how, “it can still be art, but we can help a winemaker a little bit to better hit their target.”

Chemical & Engineering News

ISSN 0009-2347

Copyright © 2014 American Chemical Society

This article originally featured on Chemical & Engineering News on the 22nd September 2014