Laurie Daniels covered a new wine enhancer in this month's issue of Wines and VInes. Reverse Osmosis move over, Flash -Detente it's your time. But @ Two million dollars a pop? That's what the Monterey Wine Company obviously paid to check it out. Everyone is looking for a better mousetrap. Punch down is so over.
Daniels noted that the resulting wines lost varietal expression. That might be the point of the contraption-- make a wine with no personality, after all, did you read Alessandra Stanley's review of the Sarah Palin show? People wanted her unedited self and what they got was Palin as Spam.
So, the device is an expensive homogenizer at best or a killer at worst. 
Instead of a RO machine working on the wine, this baby works on the prefermented juice--flash pasteurized at about 180 degrees F. Let's call it the reverse of cold-soak.
When you check out the detente technique you'll find some of the amazing benefits.
Increase and speed up the anthocyanin, colloid and tannin extraction
Better management and performance of the vinification campaign: shortening
of the fermentation time, improvement of the turnover
Production of a wider range of wines and an enhancement of their value
added: color, structure, bouquet.
Development of international market: flexible
(not sure what that one means)
But even if this device made a better coke, how does a machine like that earn its keep? Two million bucks is a lotta pasta.
Instead of a RO machine working on the wine, this baby works on the prefermented juice--flash pasteurized at about 180 degrees F. Let's call it the reverse of cold-soak.
When you check out the detente technique you'll find some of the amazing benefits.
Increase and speed up the anthocyanin, colloid and tannin extraction
Better management and performance of the vinification campaign: shortening
of the fermentation time, improvement of the turnover
Production of a wider range of wines and an enhancement of their value
added: color, structure, bouquet.
Development of international market: flexible
(not sure what that one means)
But even if this device made a better coke, how does a machine like that earn its keep? Two million bucks is a lotta pasta.
An update on Flash Detente from the Northbay Business Journal - industrial processing moving upscale in Sonoma?
Flash Wine Technologies (707-310-4925, flashwinetechnologies.com) is targeting smaller-scale flash détente wine processing services with a new company based at Kunde Estate Winery in Kenwood.
In the past two years, Carneros Vintners and Lodi Vintners have been installing such machines with capacity for 20 tons of grapes. Flash Wine Technologies targets Northern California wineries with grape lots as small as 10 tons. Della Tofolla USA of Windsor is supplying these units.
Flash détente has been used outside the U.S. for two decades to greatly improve wine flavor, color and overall quality. The process uses extreme heat followed by rapid cooling in a vacuum chamber, literally exploding grape berries and the cell walls that contain pigments and flavonoids.
Flashing the grape must — fresh juice with skins, seeds and stems — can correct viticultural problems, such as shaded vineyard sites, north or west facing slopes, heavy soil sites or vineyards with declining health or virus issues. The processed must can be pressed immediately to ferment as juice or left on the skins.
Posted by: George | 09/24/2012 at 05:06 PM