Projects

Results: A Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation (GWRDC) initiative to reduce protein haze in white wine will benefit Australians to the tune of $98 million over 30 years.

Protein haze can lead to a cloudy appearance in wine, which has shown to be unappealing to wine consumers.

An independent study by EconSearch shows strong positive returns to the grape and wine industry from GWRDC’s investment in the development of technology for in-line dosing of bentonite.

Chair of GWRDC Dennis Mutton says the GWRDC investment brought forward the technology by an estimated eight years.

“The $968,000 research project resulted in better quality wine and lower production costs,” Mr Mutton said.

“The in-line dosing and centrifugal clarification is a continuous processing technique with a range of improvements compared to traditional batch fining with bentonite.

“It provides a rapid processing method for protein haze reduction in wine or juice with a decreased volume of lees or dead yeast cells.

“It can significant reduce losses in value due to batch fining and the resulting quality downgrades that occur in wine recovered from bentonite lees by traditional rotary drum vacuum filtration.”

Conventional batch treatments with bentonite produce large volumes of lees, which may trap between three and 10 per cent of the wine being treated.

Occluded wine recovered from the lees may subsequently contain reduced levels of desirable colour and flavour components and is therefore considered of lower quality and value.

The evaluation showed positive returns to winemakers as levy payers, as well as spillover benefits to the broader community, he said.

Benefits included additional volume and value of recovered wine, reduced waste disposal costs, capital cost savings, decreased net operating costs, and increased processing capacity.

Mr Mutton says the new process reduced the volume of lees by 75 per cent, resulting and in a quantifiable reduction in winery waste disposal costs.

“It is estimated for a winery with a production capacity of 40 million litres of white wine per annum, that waste disposal costs could be reduced by 0.06 cents per litre of production per annum,” he said.

“In addition to the quantifiable monetary benefit associated with a reduction in the volume of bentonite waste, there are range of spillover costs associated with the handling and disposal of bentonite lees that could also be avoided with the adoption of the improved bentonite fining technology.

“These costs include occupational health and safety issues for winery staff; and contribution to waste streams including landfill and waste water.”