Automated Wine Analysis at Balfour Winery
Balfour Winery is one of England’s leading wine producers, pioneers for both English traditional method sparkling wines, and a new wave of English still wines. Making over 400,000 bottles of still and sparkling wines each year, Balfour is one of England’s most respected and renowned wineries, combining world-class winemaking with a spirit of innovation.
QCL has been supplying UK food and drink manufacturers with equipment for QC testing for over 40 years with a focus on innovative technology backed up by excellent technical support and customer service.
Balfour’s Technical and Compliance Manager Emma Barlow was looking for an accurate, automated system to aid in grape and wine analysis. After meeting QCL at an open day at NIAB’s Vineyard and Winery in East Malling, Emma was keen to explore the benefits of bringing testing to her laboratory rather than sending samples out for external analysis, so a trial was arranged in Balfour’s winery.
For automated wine analysis, QCL offers the Y15 from BioSystems. The Y15 is used in hundreds of wineries across the world and is renowned as a real workhorse in the industry. Using enzymatic techniques, the Y15 can accurately measure a wide range of critical parameters such as; Malic and Lactic Acid, Glucose, Fructose and Sucrose, Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen (YAN) and many more. Enzymatic techniques are known for being the most sensitive, specific and reliable methods for these parameters and adding an automated analysis system ensures laboratory efficiency, accuracy and traceability.
Results from the trial were closely aligned to the external laboratory and the benefits of fast results were clear. Balfour Winery purchased an instrument in time for the 2024 harvest.
After using the system during harvest, Emma Barlow said “The Y15 analyser has streamlined our onsite laboratory and allowed us to conduct a wider range of analyses onsite. This has been advantageous during busy periods such as harvest and bottling, enabling faster decision making at critical process stages.”
4/12/2024