Articles
Natural Wines and Foaming Cider Kegs! – Testing Times July 18
Natural wine To quote wine writer Max Allen (1) “The hottest wine trend of the decade? That’s easy: all things natural. Grapes grown with a minimum of sprays, preferably organic or biodynamic; nothing added in the cellar except perhaps a small amount of sulphur dioxide preservative at bottling. Just wine. It’s also been the […]
Stuck Ferments, Case Study and Alcohol Content Labelling for Export – Testing Times June 18
Stuck Ferments Every vintage and every region has its own particular issues. So there is always something to keep us interested in the lab. Often the issues are minor or sometimes they are region-wide and a bit of a pain. One problem that appears to some degree, in some place, every year, is the issue […]
Fermented Juices, Tank Water Testing and High Acid Cider – Testing Times May 18
Winery tank issues – for water that is! Vintage is the time when we typically see lots of winemaking fermentation problems – but we thought you might need a break from all that. So in case you’re sick of thinking about wine at the moment, this month we take a look at an interesting issue […]
pH Testing, Smokey Wines and A Sticky Situation! – Testing Times March 18
Smoke taint concerns from February bushfire in Orange (Image Credit: Christina Bos) Our NSW manager, Christina Bos, knew it was a bad sign for the local wine industry when she saw the columns of smoke rising off Mt Canobolas from her front veranda in Orange one weekend in February. For those that know this gorgeous […]
Chinese Export Requirements and a Green Fairy Tale! – Testing Times Feb 2018
Chinese Exports requirements We receive many requests for a variety of tests for wines destined for China. These vary amongst clients and we often find that we are doing special tests for some exporters and not others. Added to this are some unusual tests that have been requested by the Chinese authorities over the past […]
Malo-Lactic Fermentation Vacation, Patulin in Apple Products and Sucrose Testing in Sparkling Base Wine – Testing Times Jan 2018
MLF and holidays Would you think there is a connection between vacations and malo-lactic fermentation (MLF)? Here is an example of such a connection. Recently we received a problem sample of wine that had not completed MLF. The winemaker, who had been away for a winter holiday, had added a large dose of sulfur dioxide […]
Wastewater Testing: Chemical Oxygen Demand
We are pleased to now offer Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) analysis in addition to our extensive range of wastewater tests. Need quicker results than the industry standard 5 day BOD test can provide? COD testing can give you a good indication of the oxygen demand in your sample much more quickly. We have implemented the […]
Petiole Testing Time
The best time of year to collect grape vine Petioles for analysis is now (full flowering, 80% cap-fall). Petiole testing can provide a snapshot of the nutrient status of the vine. Obtaining quantitative information on nutrient levels can assist in determining the effectiveness of fertiliser applications and also help you to identify the cause of […]
Brettanomyces creeping up on you?
It’s that time of year again when this yeast can rear its ugly head. Brettanomyces can produce the volatile phenols 4-ethyl phenol (4EP) and 4-ethyl guaiacol (4EG), which are responsible for sweaty, horsey or medicinal off-flavours in wine. Right now red wines should have completed primary fermentation and have been transferred to barrels for oak […]
Exporting wine to China?
We are NATA accredited to prepare Export Certificates for wines destined for all major export destinations, including China. The benefits of using the Vintessential Laboratory Export Service include: ► Fast Turnaround: We strive to have most Export Certificates completed and issued to you one day after receiving your samples. ► Minimal Sample Required: We require only one bottle of finished wine for testing […]
The Vintessential ChemWell Discrete Analysers
By now, you may have heard that Vintessential Laboratories have their very own range of Discrete Analysers – the easiest way to automatically perform all your enzymatic testing needs. Our two units, The ChemWell and the Chemwell-T are manufactured in the USA. ChemWell technology is trusted across the globe, and is found in many types of laboratories, including medical […]
Become an Alchemist
Alchemy I and II yeasts blends were the first products on the market to combine two yeasts in the one pack. The strains were specifically chosen after extensive research to enhance the wine aroma based on the metabolic interaction between specific yeast strains present in the blend. Alchemy I and II are now widely used […]
A Whiff of Brett in a Barrel, Gelatinous Blobs in Wine and Caustic Gin – Testing Times – August 2017
Vintessential Laboratories are dedicated to helping our winery customers discover winemaking problems early, understand them, and then fix them. At our five laboratories around Australia we test hundreds of samples every week, so there’s hardly a problem we haven’t seen. Every month we bring you some of the recent problems that have been sent to […]
Fizzing Red and Tartrate Stabilisation – Testing Times – June 2017
This month – Red Wine Fizzing and Tartrate Stabilisation with CMC Vintessential Laboratories are dedicated to helping our winery customers discover winemaking problems early, understand them, and then fix them. At our five laboratories around Australia we test hundreds of samples every week, so there’s hardly a problem we haven’t seen. Every month we bring you […]
Obscuration, Unsatisfactory Bentonite and Sulfur Dioxide Strikes Again! – Testing Times May 2017
Introduction This month we look at some more curly issues we’ve received in the lab. Helping to solve them has involved some intricacies of testing and we’ve had to call upon our many years’ experience in sorting out some of these problems in our own laboratories. Sulfur dioxide test problems – again! Many wineries do […]
Testing gives results
Greg Howell Vintessential Laboratories Introduction Some, but by no means all, samples we receive in our laboratories cause quite a bit of interest for us and quite some angst for our winemaker clients. These samples and how they are tested can present some interesting case studies in what can go wrong in the winemaking process. […]
Problem wines we’ve recently seen…
Greg Howell Introduction As a wine consulting laboratory business, now with labs in five States of Australia, we deal with many wineries and many thousands of wines every year. Most of these wines are of good quality; however a very small minority have some issues that need our help. Our job is to investigate what […]
Interwinery Analysis Group finds best test for sugars in wine
Carly Gamble and Greg Howell Introduction Determining the sugar content of juice and wine is an essential part of the winemaking process. Glucose and fructose are the most abundant sugars naturally present in grapes and they are also fermentable sugars – their presence in finished wine leaving the wine susceptible to spoilage. Accurate monitoring of […]
Safety considerations in your wine lab this vintage
Greg Howell Vintessential Laboratories Vintessential has built and opened three new wine testing laboratories in the past year – in Orange New South Wales, Hobart Tasmania and the Margaret River region of Western Australia. If our experience is any guide, your lab may be working outside the requirements of the appropriate Australian Standards! A winery […]
Acetaldehyde – how to limit its formation during fermentation
Steve Byrne and Greg Howell Vintessential Laboratories Introduction Although most winemakers are aware of acetaldehyde, it still causes some negative impacts on wine quality. It is the main carbonyl compound formed in wine during fermentation, although it can also be produced in wine via other mechanisms. High levels of this aldehyde can have poor sensory […]
