Today’s wine consumers are increasingly focused on sustainability, pushing wineries to reduce water use, limit chemicals, and improve overall efficiency — all without compromising wine quality. Meeting these expectations requires innovative systems that make operations cleaner, faster, and more resource-efficient. Spraying Systems Co. helps wineries achieve exactly that. Their Cloud-Sellers® Tank Cleaning and WindJet® Drying Systems are designed to minimize waste and energy consumption while maintaining high production standards. The Cloud-Sellers® 360 Tank Cleaner and TankJet® Nozzles deliver powerful, uniform cleaning with less water and reduced cycle times, helping wineries save both time and resources. Meanwhile, WindJet® Air Knife Systems use clean, heated air to dry bottles and containers quickly and efficiently — cutting energy use and reducing the need for compressed air. By integrating these sustainable solutions, wineries can l

Issue: Time-Consuming and Wasteful Cleaning Processes Winery cleaning is essential to maintain quality, but traditional cleaning methods can be inefficient and costly, wasting water and chemicals, and requiring significant labor. Solution: Cloud-Sellers® and TankJet® Cleaning Systems from Spraying Systems Co. Spraying Systems Co.'s Cloud-Sellers® 360 Fluid-Driven Tank Cleaner and TankJet® 50 Fluid-Driven Tank Cleaner provide effective and efficient solutions to clean tanks and barrels quickly, with minimal resource waste. These systems reduce cleaning time, improve consistency, and help maintain hygiene without compromising quality. How It Works: The Cloud-Sellers® 360 is perfect for large tanks, up to 100 feet in diameter. It delivers high-impact cleaning, ensuring that even stubborn residues are removed efficiently, which helps minimize downtime between cleaning and production cycles. The TankJet® 50 nozzle provides high-impact, solid stream

Afternoon Brief: Sugarloaf Custom Winery Seeks Bankruptcy Protection as $13 Million Loan in Default

Sugarloaf Wine Co. southeast of Santa Rosa filed for Chapter 11 reorganization as loan on winery goes into foreclosure. Founder says hundreds of thousands of dollars from the winery and a separate vineyard operation went to fund a fintech startup...

The Cloud-Sellers™ 360 Fluid-driven Tank Cleaner for tanks up to 100’ (30 m) in diameter – this powerful fluid-driven machine offers the most consistent impact over the entire pressure range. High-impact cleaning removes even the most stubborn residues efficiently and effectively so tanks can be returned to service quickly. Available with 2 or 3 nozzles, the Model 360 features gear ratio options and food-grade oil-lubricated or flow-through gearbox designs for maximum cleaning flexibility, predictability, and minimum cleaning cycle times. Learn more about the Cloud-Sellers 360 Tank Cleaner.

Afternoon Brief, November 13th

Italian Watchdog Launches Wine Bottle Cartel Investigation: The Italian competition authority, the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), has launched an investigation into a possible cartel among manufacturers of wine bottles...

Non-Conventional Wine Yeast, Oak Compound Analysis, Optimizing Aromatic Expression, and Low Alc, Low Cal & Vegan Winemaking The WIN Expo Winemaking & Production conference program will feature FOUR sessions discussing The Use of Non-Conventional Wine Yeast, Oak Compound Analysis, Optimizing Aromatic Expression of Wine Grapes, and Low Alc, Low Cal & Vegan Winemaking Solutions. Read more below: Non-Conventional Wine Yeast and Their Impact on Sensory Characteristics What are the specific advantages of using Metschnikowia pulcherrima and other non-traditional yeast strains in winemaking? This session, sponsored by AB Biotek, will provide attendees with an opportunity to taste wines made with a yeast strain sourced from the AWRI and experience how these new yeast strains can potentially create novel wine styles with increased aroma, palate complexity, and enhanced color as compared to Sacharramyces cerevisiae and uninoculated controls. - LEARN MORE about this session. Advances

March on California’s bulk wine and grape markets continued where February left off, with transaction levels limited on most items amid a patchy case-good sales picture and a disconnect between buyer and seller price expectations. With another 4-6 weeks still to go before the frost risk passes in the vineyards, many a buyer and seller feel they can hold off from making decisions until May or beyond.  Whether a frosty few weeks would necessarily precipitate a great deal of fresh buying activity – when two previous crops of 3.63 and 3.34 million tons have failed to do so – is another matter. With US consumer confidence indexes showing real pessimism (sometimes at recession-like levels), and recent banking failures, and expectations of a continuation of the long-term stagnation in overall wine sales (in the US as in all mature markets), it remains hard to foresee highly active grape or bulk wine buying across the board in the near future. There will always be specif

Mid-September brought three to four days of rainfall to California, mainly to the North Coast’s growing areas and in the lower Central Coast areas around Santa Barbara. Up to three inches of rain fell in some parts. Isolated Central Valley areas also received precipitation. Since then, the weather has been excellent – warm and clear – for finishing up harvest in an orderly manner.  The rain fell just a few days after an intense heatwave that brought a week of 105-115° temperatures. Such volatility of conditions was simply the latest in a growing season that has experienced the full spectrum – excluding wildfires/ smoke – that Mother Nature can throw up, sometimes back-to-back: Isolated frost and hail, record heat, rain and humidity, cloudiness, more record heat, more rain, all the while drought being an underlying concern. Early September’s heatwave potentially imbalanced grape chemistry in some areas and rapidly put on sugar; days later, ra

Conditions in California’s growing areas were largely normal through June into early July – perhaps slightly on the erratic side, with degree-day accumulation highly variable between areas and some humidity and/or shatter in evidence. It goes without saying that water supplies are a concern across the state.  Phonologically, overall, the timing of vine development appears to be similar to last year, though areas of the Central Coast – namely Monterey – are potentially lagging behind what was already an unusually late year in 2021 (picking in some areas lasted into November). Degree-day accumulation has been variable, with the King City area of Monterey well behind last year while accumulation in Paso Robles has been ahead.  Lodi has largely experienced normal conditions interspersed by the odd bout of humidity or cloudiness. Timing there is similar to last year, though degreeday accumulation is behind in western Lodi. Up in northern Lodi and the North