ABC's of Winery SOPs

By Jennie Savits

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) might not be a first, second, or even an afterthought for a small winery operation. However, investing time into developing these written instructional procedures can lead to benefits in consistency of employee training, ease of carrying out daily production tasks, and overall organization of workflow. SOPs are also an integral part of ensuring food safety. Develop and implement SOPs in all areas of the operation luding but not limited to; employee health and hygiene (i.e. handwashing), vineyard work (i.e. pruning, spraying, berry sampling), cellar work (i.e. pump-overs, transfers, ions, lab analyses), and the tasting room. SOPs for cleaning and sanitation processes are so critical that a second acronym was developed for them, SSOPs (sanitation standard operating procedure).

By definition, SOPs are a set of instructions for how to carry out routine tasks. If you would train a new employee on a given task, there should be an SOP for it. Even if you are the only one doing the work, it is important and worthwhile to write it out and have record of how to do what it is you need to do.  A well-written SOPs answers these questions: WHO should carry out the task? WHAT materials are needed to complete the work? WHERE should the activity take place? WHEN will the task be performed? HOW does the employee complete the task? Safety is also key here. SOPs describe all known or potential job hazards and how to mitigate risk to complete things in a safe manner.
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Haze-Forming Proteins in Wine

By Maureen Moroney

Our understanding of where proteins in wine come from and how they form hazes has continued to develop over time. Protein haze in wine is of particular concern with hybrid cultivars typically grown in the Midwest. Here is a summary of three publications from research journals, each touching on a different important aspect of this topic, and reflecting our increasing knowledge over the last 15 years or so.

• Majority of proteins in finished wines are pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins
  • regardless of grape variety, region, year, or winemaking conditions
• PR proteins may be expressed automatically in leaves and berries over the growing season, or may be induced by environmental conditions (such as disease pressure)
• Protein content also depends on cultivar, region, climate, and viticultural practices
  • Example: mechanical harvesting and long transport of wounded fruit higher --> PR protein levels in resulting wine
• Interspecific hybrid cultivars are bred for disease resistance in addition to cold hardiness
• More PR proteins --> higher disease resistance
• More PR proteins --> more haze formation
• Grape PR proteins are very stable in the short- to medium-term, but can become unstable in the long term
• As the proteins are denatured in the wine over time, they can form hazes or deposits.

Health Benefits of Iowa Red Wine

By Somchai Rice

How many times have you heard about the heart healthy benefits of red wine? The antioxidants or polyphenols in red wine have been touted as a heart healthy benefit to the occasional glass of wine. This article will take a closer look at the antioxidant resveratrol, potential health benefits, and resveratrol levels found in 6 Iowa red wines.

In pharmacokinetics, ADME is an abbreviation for absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion. These 4 parameters influence the concentration of a given compound, and thus the pharmacological activity of the compound throughout the body.  When drinking a glass of wine, the process of absorption is ingestion. ADME has been studied in rat models, dosed at 20 mg/kg of resveratrol extract. Resveratrol was found in the stomach, duodenum, liver and kidney with resveratrol monoglucuronide and resveratrol monosulfide (as a result of Pass 2 metabolism) excreted in urine (Wang 2008). The primary target of resveratrol is sirtuin 1 and interacts with many proteins to indirectly activate sirtuin 1 (NIH 2012). Acute antioxidant and anti-cancer affects have reported (de la Lastra and Vellegas 2007). Chronic effects are unclear due to insufficient data.

A method was developed at Iowa State University to quantify trans-resveratrol in red wine using solid-phase microextraction, using on-fiber derivatization and gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry (Cai 2009). trans-Resveratrol was quantified in six Iowa red wines, with measured concentrations varying from 12.72 to 851.9 µg/L. In other words, you have to drink 1 liter of Iowa red wine in order to also consume 0.01272 to 0.8519 mg of resveratrol. Hebbar et al (2005) showed that a high dose of resveratrol (300 to 3000 g/kg per day) upregulates phase II and antioxidant genes in rats.
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Photo: https://tastessence.com/red-wine-vinegar-substitute

Series- Wine Professionals Out of the Winery