What Didn't Kill Us  Made Us Stronger (We Think) About 2025…  We've heard it from colleagues and customers, and we'll say it ourselves: 2025 was a rough one. But we kept moving. So did you. Here's what worked last year and what's still working. Product of the Year: Mori MFV Trailers This year we helped grape processors minimize over-handling, and work with machine harvesting—not against it. Mori's MFV trailers take grapes mobile, and turn anywhere into a crush pad with a tilting frame and vibrating exit tray that can directly feed a destemmer, sorter, or elevator. Read more here. Processing Essentials: Webcast Series A Free Learning Resource All About Equipment Management for Beverage Producers Practical tips, zero filler: the Processing Essentials webcast series is built for busy teams who want to learn fast. The 3rd Thursday of Each Month (Skipping July-August). Register here. Bulk Buying Is In! We're offering low costs on

Looking for the ideal solutions for your winery? Come visit our team at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium booth H2, Jan. 25-26, 2023. Our dedication to quality products and service will guarantee you will get the best equipment at the best price to fit perfectly with your winery. Criveller offers the following products: Custom Sized and Designed Stainless Steel Tanks Pneumatic and Hydraulic Presses Destemmer Crushers Elevators and Hoppers Sorting Systems Multiples styles of pumps DE Filters Filtration Sparkling Wine Equipment Complete Bottling Solutions Wax Sealing Machines Criveller Group was founded in 1979 with an emphasis on providing innovative processing and packaging solutions to the wine regions of North America. By forging alliances with leading European equipment manufacturers, Criveller became recognized not only for high-quality equipment, but also for our technical expertise, design services and superior customer service.

WECO offers a full line of Blueberry packaging as well as foreign material, defect, and size sorting for the fresh-pack and frozen markets. Our state-of-the-art defect and foreign material sorters, in addition to our pre- and post-IQF frozen blueberry sorters, have been the industry standard for over 15 years. This market leadership has continued with the introduction of the fresh BerryTek Sortivator line in 2021, weigh-and-fill packaging line (in partnership with Azcaval) in 2021, and Jumbo Size Sortivator in 2022. Simply put: WECO provides the fastest, most effective, and gentlest berry sorting and packaging products on the market.  That is why our equipment is used by every major Blueberry marketing brand in the world. Three small but essential advances make the new BerryTek Color Sortivator the gentlest and most sanitary blueberry color sorter in the industry. First, an integrated elevator transfers the berries from one machine to the next with a drop of less than 2 inches (5

Santa Rosa, CA: TCW Equipment is pleased to announce its partnership with PROTEC equipment, the unequivocal leader in optical sorting technology. Protec produces innovative products for the food, wine-growing, seafood and agricultural sectors. This alliance was established to collaborate on improving the U.S. based representation and service to the wine industry for PROTEC’s line of optical products. PROTEC’s optical sorters utilize entirely novel computer vision methods not available in any other machine on the market. The result is fruit that is more cleanly and effectively processed than with competitive optical sorters. In truth, there is no competition.  Optical sorting provides incredible benefits to winemakers that can't be matched with manual sorting. While some traditionalists initially sniffed at the concept of computers sorting grapes, those same purists have been won over the huge advantages optical sorting offers: greatly reduced labor costs, increased

The Great Supply Chain Kerfuffle of 2021

Delays in deliveries are affecting viticulture and winemaking procedures, product launches, and limiting consumers’ options during the peak of holiday wine-buying. —Jeff Siegel Brian Talley ordered a new grape elevator in January, figuring that would allow plenty of time for him to use it this harvest. He figured wrong. The elevator not only didn’t arrive […]

In Part One of our guide to building a crush pad we looked at receiving and processing grapes for fermentation or pressing. Let's now take a look at presses. The question of basket vs. membrane press comes up frequently, so let's address it upfront. Basket vs. Pneumatic Membrane Presses Since we're focusing on crush pads processing anywhere from 3 to 20+ tons per hour of grapes, we'll look at the two most popular options for crush pads of this size: basket and pneumatic membrane presses. Basket Presses For a deeper dive you can check out our Guide to Basket Presses. But as a general overview, basket presses have a "platen" (large flat plate) that is connected to one or more hydraulic pistons. The pistons push the platen down slowly until it reaches the grapes held in a cylindrical basket. These hydraulic pistons are capable of generating tens of thousands of pounds of force. As this force reaches the grapes and is distributed over the surface of the

Perhaps no single piece of equipment is more iconic in winemaking than the basket press. Even those only marginally familiar with winery equipment can see a picture like the one above and immediately identify it as a wine press. In this article we'll take a look at some of the common features and functions of a basket press. We sell Mori Basket Presses, and have for many years, so we'll discuss those specifically. Nonetheless, the concepts will apply to most basket presses made today. Commercial basket presses work by pressing grapes held in a large basket. The basket is usually stainless, though food-grade plastic or wood are options as well. Hydraulic basket presses have a large hydraulic piston with a "platen" (large flat plate) at the end. The piston pushes the platen down until it reaches the grapes. This piston is capable of generating tens of thousands of pounds of force. As this force reaches the grapes and is distributed over the surface of the platen, juice

Building a crush pad to commercially process wine grapes at scale may be daunting. Luckily we've been doing it for years, and we have a few tips. Here are some ways you can use equipment to make harvest something to look forward to, not fear. This is a two-part series. In part one we'll take a look at everything up to the press. In part two, we'll take a deeper dive into presses. Step One: Receiving Grapes The first thing to consider is how you'll be receiving grapes, and how you'll be feeding the grapes into your processing equipment. In the US, grapes are typically moved in bins—they're referred to as macro bins, T-bins, or just plain old "bins". Given that bins are the most common way to receive grapes, they are also the most common way to load them into and out of crush pad equipment. This being the case, a forklift-mounted bin dumper tends to be a pretty crucial piece of equipment. You'll want to talk to a forklift sales company about t

Are you ready for the 2020 Harvest? You still have time to order that last minute piece of equipment you need! Criveller has just received a shipment of last minute harvest equipment.  These items are in stock and ready for immediate delivery. Equipment: Grape Elevator - NE4000mm x 500mm  Output: 5-15 Tons/hr Top 10 Destemmer Output: 5-10 Tons/hr PPA 35 w/press panel Output per cycle: Whole grapes:                           2.6 Tons/hr Destemmed pressed grapes:    8 Tons/hr With fermented skins:               12 Tons/hr PEV 280 Output: 18-20 Tons/hr **All equipment above is IN-Stock at our Healdsburg, CA facility.  For more information, contact one of our two North America locations: Criveller California West Coast 707-431-2211 Salessupport@criveller.com Criveller Group East Coast 905-357-2930 info@criv

Imagine it's harvest and your grapes just arrived…now where do you put them? Forget about "sexy" equipment like presses, let's focus on the nitty-gritty: receiving grapes. Moving grapes in style When the bins start coming in fast and furious you may be able to dump direct to you destemmer, but that isn't always the most gentle way to move grapes. Let's look at some options. We can help you decide, but remember: orders must be placed by April 1st for harvest delivery! Grapes in motion Mori's MFV grape trailers allow you to move your grapes from the vineyard to the crush pad. They're a combination trailer and vibratory feeding hopper. The all-stainless trailer can move up to 5 tons at time. When you reach your destination, the trailer lifts hydraulically and turns into a vibrating shaker table. You can precisely adjust the angle of incline and vibration speed to meter in grapes at the desired rates. Read more... Vibing with harvest You've