BAROSSA VALLEY Oxford Landing Estate Vineyard and Winery sits on land where drovers once grazed and watered sheep. Today it’s home to a loyal flock of down-to-earth folk who take great pride in making quality wines, enjoyed the world over. With 650 acres under vine on the northern edge of the Barossa Valley, Oxford is not exactly small, but by micro-managing 130 five-acre blocks as separate ecosystems, the grapes are given exactly what they need to achieve optimum flavour. Techniques such as detailed pruning, canopy management and crop thinning provide the winery with ultimate control in expressing the individuality of each block. Oxford prides itself on being nimble enough to harvest small batches of the fruit as soon as they ripen, so not an ounce of freshness is lost. However, the key to Oxford’s success is its ability to achieve a continuous production flow via a sophisticated automation and control system. In winemaking, this timing is particularly crucial, since the grapes need to be processed within a critical window of time where the acid and sugar content are at a premium. To achieve this, together with keeping up with increasing consumer demands, winemakers in Australia and New Zealand are turning to technology to 48 JULY 2016 streamline the process. One of the main challenges with winemaking is that customers expect consistency, they get used to a particular label and expect it to taste the same, but every year the acid level and sugar levels are different, as are the aromas and colour of the berries. When demand for Yalumba wine varieties exceeded land capacity, Oxford was established as the primary producer of the label’s popular two-litre cask wine varieties. Winery operations manager John Ide says the aim for Oxford was “an environmentally friendly plant incorporating the latest in winemaking technology, plus a new and unique process stream methodology. The objective was to achieve greater management of the process and the product.” The Oxford Landing Estate Winery was commissioned in 2005 and has been able to meet market requirements and improve product quality for more than a decade now. The secret, says Ide, is the automated process streams provided by Rockwell Automation that ensure the grapes are fermented under optimum conditions, given the high volume throughput. Ide says it is particularly critical at all times to control fermentation rate and minimise oxidation, both of which are highly dependent on temperature. From the moment the skin is broken during harvesting, it’s important to move the product quickly through the crushing stage, chilled and into the controlled environments of the fermentation tanks. Each process stream begins at one of three receive hopper/crusher bays, where loads of grapes are converted into ‘must’, a mix of juice, skin and seeds. The must is then pumped through one of three ‘must chillers’ to reduce the temperature to around 12 degrees Celsius for white, and heat or cool to 25 degrees for red. To produce white wine, the juice is extracted from the skin and seeds and clarified prior to fermentation; conversely, red wine is fermented with the skins included in the fermentation vessel. For both styles of wine, the premium juice/wine or ‘free run’ is drained and kept separate from the second CONTINUOUS PRODUCTION FLOW A WINNER FOR VINEYARD W I N E T E C H N O L O G Y
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