Sebastopol, CA - August 25, 2020 - American Winesecrets, LLC. (Winesecrets), North America’s wine taint mitigation expert has partnered with Napa Wine Co. , Napa’s leader in high quality, reserve lot custom crush to provide an artisan-scale Flash Détente system at the Oakville crush facility. Flash Détente removes pigments from grape skins instantaneously prior to fermentation and has proven beneficial in reducing the impact of smoke exposure once the wines have completed fermentation.

The smoke-taint causing volatile phenol compounds accumulate in grape skins during wildfire incidents. Flash Détente streamlines red maceration by rapidly heating must and then cooling it instantaneously in a vacuum chamber. The treatment results in the rupturing of cell walls initiating an efficient breakdown of the structure of the berry. The smoke aromatics are carried off with water vapor in the vacuum. “Flash Détente has a key advantage over standard maceration during periods of smoke contamination,” said Eric Dahlberg, Winesecrets’ Founder and President. “By quickly extracting color and other phenolics, red wine fermentation can proceed without skin contact, minimizing the impact of smoke-taint from contaminated grape skins,” added Dahlberg.

The artisan-scale Flash Détente unit is capable of processing up to 1.5 tons per hour of must, and is scaled to treat reserve lots of 3-20 tons. “We are thrilled to add Flash Détente capability. It’s another great tool in our tool kit for making our customers’ exceptional wines..” said Russ Joy, General Manager of Napa Wine Company. Napa Wine Co. plans to host the system during the remainder of this harvest season.

Napa Wine Company opened in 1995 as a custom crush provider. They regularly hosts multiple award-winning wineries, ranging from 250 cases to 100,000 cases. To schedule grapes for processing with the artisan-scale Flash Détente, please call Napa Wine Company’s Director of Operations, Mark Solorio at (707) 944-4473.

Winesecrets offers outsourced wine production services, including VA and other taint removal, alcohol reduction, other specialized filtration, high-proof alcohol sales, Test Track wine assessment services, and a variety of wastewater treatment technologies. For information about Flash Détente and other advanced smoke taint mitigation methods, contact Winesecrets’ Director of Operations, Travis Smith at (707) 824-2022.