So, this post is going to be quite different than my normal posts. It’s not so much an artistic one, but one to show a bit of the equipment I work with. Not all of the items shown below are used by the facilities I’ve worked at, but they are all involved within the wine industry in one way or another.
7:30. No, this was not fun. Well, I mean, it wasn’t too bad, but I would have much rather slept in. We had a two hour drive over to Sacramento where the Wine Symposium was being held.
Sunrise over the hills. We beat it. Like a boss.
Coffee is a necessity, no matter what industry you’re in. We popped into a small shop in St. Helena, California for a cup of their fresh roasted black caffeinated liquid. So good. Lessgo!
In Napa Valley, all you see is grapes down on the flat – which is quite different than where I began in the wine industry, Oregon, where they’re mostly grown on the hills. Soil types play a huge roll in the quality of fruit coming off of the vines.
This is a nation wide event, and international – even. There were people and exhibitors from all over the world selling the best of the best (you’ll see the goods below).
Required registration. Lucky for us, we had pre-registered, and didn’t have to wait in the 4 mile long line.
These guys are automatic valves. For the HUGE facilities (such as the ones that make “yellow tail” – or any custom crush facility where it’s not economical to have someone go and switch valves between tanks, these are installed. Controlled by a computer either offsite, or in a winemaker’s lab.
Old style still. Usually don’t see these in wineries, but it’s cool to check out what one looks like anyway. If you still wine, you get grappa. A vodka, of sorts.
This decanter was awesome. Put your bottle in the top, and it aerated the wine as it was poured into the decanter. The best part of it was, if you inverted the black cap that the bottle sits in, it would go back into the bottle, so you didn’t *HAVE* to drink a whole bottle at once (but really, in all honesty, decants a bottle of wine and doesn’t drink it all?)
Not all bottles are created equal. I bet you probably can’t find two of the same bottle (of different labels) if you go to the grocery store. From glass thickness, to color, to shape, it seems EVERY bottle is different – and each characteristic difference has a purpose. From weight, to price, glass producers create as many options as possible to make their product more appealing to a buyer.
Blurry, I know, but bear with me. Industrial nozzles for hoses are great. They allow way more waterflow, and are way more durable than anything you’ll find at the Home Depot, or the like. Unfortunately, these nozzles can easily run upwards of $125 each. Good thing is, they’ll definitely last a long time. Solid pieces of equipment.
This is an auto-leveling mechanical harvester. It’s designed to be able to drive along rows at up to a 30˚ angle, and still have the top be perfectly level – and it does this all automatically. These mechanical harvesters are great for vineyards where it’s not very economical to hire pickers to get your grapes, and are mainly used in Marlborough, New Zealand, and a couple of regions here in California (There are far more regions, I’m certain, but I don’t know any other ones for sure). 
By far, the coolest, most well-thought-out piece of equipment I saw today. It’s called an optical sorter, and literally has a camera that scans the grapes (after they’ve come through a destemmer) and detects anything that doesn’t fall within a certain criteria of acceptable grape matter (such as leaves, twigs, raisins, moldy berries, etc…). You have to program it with a few bucketfulls of “clean grapes” – then it does the rest. All of the grape material goes across a grid, and when the camera detects something that isn’t grape matter, a jet of air blows the non-grapety goodness up (not explode), and into a chute where it can be discarded of later. 
Simple bottling line. The machine on the left, with the numbers on it is the filler, and the one next to it is the corker / capsuler.
Stainless steel goodness. Again, since it’s designed to last quite a long time, it’s super expensive. The valve on the left middle is called a “butterfly valve” for it has a butterfly like plate that rotates to open and close. The one on the right is a ball valve, and the plus to that is, you can put things through it, and there’s nothing in the way, unlike the axis on the butterfly valve. 
Flow meters measure quantity of liquid flowing through a pipe, either in rate, or total volume.
Machine on the left is a centrifugal pump, which works similarly to a turbo charger on a car. The machine on the left is an ozone generator, and ozone is a “green” sanitizer, meaning it doesn’t hurt the environment. Ozone breaks down within just a few minutes, after killing bacteria / etc. No chemicals needed, it converts normal water with electricity (don’t ask me how, I don’t know. It just works. Accept it, okay?)
A baby press! Can hold around 2 tons of grapes. (that’s roughly 300 gallons worth of wine)
Another bottle filler.
Another angle of the bottle filler above.
A different design to a destemmer than I’m used to. Normally, each of those tines have paddles on them (rubber) that press the grapes against the grate to separate the grapes from the stems (which shoot out the front end). The thought behind this design is it not supposed to handle as many grapes at one time, meaning it’s slower, and more gentle on the grape (which is always the number one goal – be nice to the grapes!)
This is an RO machine, or a reverse osmosis unit. Let’s say it rains and you wanted to pick your grapes – there is hope yet! This guy removes the water from the grape juice using reverse osmosis, and extremely high pressures (60 bar – 1 bar is 14psi).
This is a de-alc unit. Which removes alcohol if your grapes came in with really high sugar, and the final product has too much alcohol (usually 15%+). Works by running water past the wine which is being pumped through a series of tubes (the four vertical units). The wine and water are separated with a membrane that only allows alcohol through. The water / alcohol mixture is pumped away, and usually disposed of.
This is another type of filter. (Not sure which type, I think it can vary, depending on which cartridge you load into the cylinders)
Heading back out to the vineyard, we’ve got some tractor attachments. The one on the right is for clipping the vines so you have perfectly manicured rows, with “walls” of grapes, rather than a bunch of scraggly shrubs. The one on the left is for sweeping under the vines, normally used after harvest when leaves are all off of the vines. A clean vineyard is a happy vineyard.
Some cleaning heads for tanks, and barrels. Each head spins with the pressure from a pump. They spray out high volumes of water (and chemical) that hit every square inch of a tank.
Have too much oxygen in your wine? Remove it with this guy! (Again, don’t ask me how it works… Still beyond me. it just does)
This is an auger driven, must-pump. Must is the grape / wine mixture (or grape / juice, if it’s before the fermentation). The cork screw at left rotates against the rubber walls creating a vacuum on one end, and positive pressure on the other. Pump.
Of course, with all this walking around, lunch must be taken. Feast time.
Another style of mechanical harvester, this one does not have the auto-leveling feature.
It’s hard to tell in this picture, but what you’re seeing is a mobile fan. Fans are put out in vineyards when frost warnings are present before the grapes have been harvested. If a frost hits, and you haven’t harvested, the vines go into shutdown mode, and begin to drop their leaves, regardless of whether or not your grapes are ripe. The fan is s’posed to move enough air so the grapes never get frost on them. It’s also roughly 40 ft tall, when the blade is vertical.
Another harvester.
Stainless steel membrane holders. Membranes are essentially filter media, usually fine tuned down to 25 micron tolerances.
One of the membranes in a crossflow filter. Each of these strands are actually porous porcelain straws. Wine is pumped through the straws, and seeps through the porcelain to the outside (still inside the plexi-glass like cylinder). That is filtered wine. The beauty of this is you don’t have to run your wines through this at super high pressures – it works by permeation, and is much gentler on the wine, not tearing apart it’s compounds that make it super delicious.
Cross flow filter, and it’s membranes.
Time to get outta there. Sheesh.