Test Trak
Test Track reverse osmosis machine that can not only remove smoke taint, but can also lower alcohol levels and remove other unwanted molecules that affect the taste of wine.
BC’s Okanagan College is offering a new service to help save local wines from the impact of smoke taint.
The BC Beverage Technology Access Centre (BTAC) has acquired a Test Track reverse osmosis machine that can not only remove smoke taint, but can also lower alcohol levels and remove other unwanted molecules that affect the taste of wine.
Wesley Peterson, general manager of BTAC, says the bench scale tactical filtration system is designed so wineries can test out what they want to do with their wine, before taking the risk of treating an entire batch.
Peterson says BTAC bought the machine primarily to help wineries with the growing issue of smoke taint.
“One of the things that became readily apparent is the increased propensity for forest fires in our local community up and down the Okanagan Valley,” he explains. “We listen to our client base and what they were saying was, you know, it’s not enough just to test for smoke taint. So look at it from the standpoint that if you walked into a doctor’s office and you said you’re sick, and then turned around and walked out, what would you do with that information? One of the things was, can we give them a trial size system where they can test small batches prior to moving on to a much larger RO (Reverse Osmosis) remediation.
“We give them the opportunity to do things like smoke taint reduction, ethanol reductions, and a number of other things to modify their wine on a smaller scale before they bite the bullet and do several thousand litres of production.”
The reverse osmosis machine was obtained from Winesecrets, a company based in Napa Valley and owned by Eric Dahlberg.
“This is a laboratory scale version of the filtration equipment that we’ve been using since 2004 to remove a variety of different wine imperfections,” said Dahlberg. “We started building miniature ones maybe 10 years ago, so that the winemakers could see what their wine would taste like, following whatever process they thought they wanted.”
The method was originally developed in Australia, which suffered massive wildfires in 2003, the same year the Thompson-Okanagan region experienced the infamous Summer of Fire. Dahlberg says his company adopted the technique, and when the Mendocino Fires hit California in 2008 they were able to salvage millions of litres of high quality wines.
In the Okanagan Valley, smoke taint remediation is done by Cellar Dweller, which has three of the larger RO machines.
But Peterson says the BTAC machine is critical because it takes the risk out of remediating a full batch of wine.
“It’s a big risk when you’re talking about literally thousands of litres of product where you might just want a small tweak and it might not end up the way you want it or expect it to,” Peterson says. “So, we can give them a small-scale adjustment, and that can scale up to what Cellar Dweller can do on a larger scale. It takes a lot of the risk out of it.”
Dahlberg notes the equipment can do a lot more than just remove the molecules that cause smoke taint, so in some ways, it’s a tool to improve wine that may have been affected by a wide variety of issues. For example, if a winemaker is trying to produce a smoother wine with lower alcohol, but the weather hasn’t cooperated, the Test Track machine can often discern what process is needed to achieve that taste profile.
“They operate at a variety of different pressures with different membranes and different accessories, so they produce different results,” Dahlberg explains. “And the test track will do all those things at a smaller scale, so they can concentrate colour, they can remove alcohol, if there’s vinegar or other off-flavors from fermentation problems they can get rid of that, and of course also take out smoke taint, so it’s a very targeted way to remove unwanted traits at the molecular level.”
Peterson says his group has already worked on different experiments with a number of local wineries, not just on smoke taint, but on reducing alcohol levels.
The wineries generally reach out to us directly and say things like, ‘Hey look, we’ve got a stop ferment, can you help us do a few ethanol reductions to see if we can get it restarted’? Or, they come to us and say we’re looking at innovating and creating a non-alcoholic version of our white and red wines, can you give us a hand?
“The emphasis is certainly with smoke taint, and we’ll hear them say you know, ‘we’re doing a malo ferment right now, and this kind of smells like an ashtray. We’re really concerned about it. Can you give us a hand’?”
In most cases BTAC works on a fee-for-service basis, but the service is very affordable, usually costing, as Peterson says, a few hundred dollars for the testing. If the testing results in a workable plan to salvage the wine, then wineries can contact Cellar Dweller to have that technique applied to the entire batch.
In some cases, Peterson says wineries come up with novel problems that result in BTAC getting a research grant from the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), so the winery only needs to pay a nominal intake fee.
We have to make this affordable or no one’s ever going to want to do a test trial,” Peterson says. “So, for a few hundred dollars they can do the test trial, and with our system we’re typically asking for somewhere between 10 to 15 litres to test, so it’s become a unique opportunity to assist wineries with what has become an all too common problem here in the Okanagan with smoke taint.”
Winemakers can learn more at: www.okanagan.bc.ca/bcbtac, and can contact BTAC by phone 250-492-4305 ext. 3360, or by email at bcbtac@okanagan.bc.ca
