Filtration

When it comes to the arrangement of machines and stations needed to finally bottle wine, I can’t help thinking of the “Skeleton Dance” song that goes – “The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone. The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone…”

IMG_2307-1024x768 — The bottling process

In short, when the wine is ready to be bottled, it is tested one last time for any errors, pumped from the cellar, through the last and sterile filtration, into the bottling machine, where sterilized bottles are filled, capped, and ready to be labeled and packaged.

In a small winery like where I work, much of this process is still done fairly manually. There is no conveyor belt bringing the bottles from one station to the next – this is done by hand.

Screen-shot-2015-10-21-at-3.41.02-PM

Before the filtering process can even begin, it is important to clean all equipment and machines. This includes all hoses, filters, and tanks. I spend some time cleaning 2 different filters. One is a cylindrical Kieselgur filter with layers of mesh screens, and the other is a rectangular Celluflux filter with metal slots that special paper-type “becopad” sheets are placed on.

Screen-shot-2015-09-01-at-10.15.59-PM — Kieselgur filter used

This week we are filtering 3 wines: Auxerrois, Weissburgunder, and Grauburgunder. On the day of filtering, we use the Kieselgur filter. The filtering process happens 4 times using 4 different grades of cellulose powder. Each time a finer power is added to the slurry of wine and forced through the metal screens that then filter out the unwanted particles. Between the second and third filter the difference in the colour and clarity of the wine is clear!

IMG_1532-768x1024 — Wine between 2nd and 3rd filtering

The wines are pumped from one tank, through the filtering machine, to another tank. This goes back and forth 4 times during this day of filtering. The wines then go back into the cellar. When it is time to bottle the wines, they will be filtered once more as they go from cellar to tank, then again as they are bottled.

Tag: Filtration

Bottling

Filtering