Okanagan wine industry invention earns prestigious nomination – Okanagan

An Okanagan invention has been nominated for an enormous award.

The AromaLoc was designed as a non-invasive method to protect the bouquet of wine that’s usually misplaced within the fermentation course of.

Now, it has been nominated for the 2021 WINnovation Award in California, recognizing these making revolutionary developments within the North American wine trade.

It was invented in 2012 by Dick Jones, and for 9 years he has been perfecting his invention together with his crew to lock in and increase the nostril of wine.

“Because the yeast ferments the sugar within the wine it additionally produces aroma compounds which dictate the standard of the wine, and sadly the aroma compounds are very unstable, that means they need to go away the liquid,” stated Jones.

“Once they go away the liquid, the CO2 that’s being produced on the identical time merely blows them out into the vineyard and so that you’ve misplaced chunk of the aromas the yeast is producing.

“So my concept was to provide you with a method to maintain these aromas from leaving and holding them within the wine.”

AromaLoc is secured onto the tops of stainless-steel vineyard tanks in the course of the fermentation course of and is a non-invasive method of enhancing the wine tasting expertise.

“So that you drink it [the wine] after which as you swallow the wine, after all, it warms up in your throat because it swallows and you then get vapours coming again up into the nostril which is known as retrograde scent,” stated Jones.

Penticton’s Pentâge Vineyard has included AromaLoc within the making of the vineyard’s whites and rosés.

“We put AromaLoc on all the things that we are able to,” stated Paul Gardener, the vineyard’s CEO.

“We’ve had these AromaLoc machines on these floating lid tanks and we now have among the Letina tanks it relies on the quantity of wine we’re doing.”

The Okanagan invention has even gone worldwide, having been studied in universities in Europe and North America and utilized by a handful of wineries around the globe.

“At this level, we apply it to the white fermentation and rosé, which is generally in stainless-steel,” stated Walter Meyer, AromaLoc advertising and marketing and gross sales director.

“We’ve got finished a trial in California on pink barrels, so barrel fermentation, as an experiment [and it was] very profitable, so we’re nonetheless engaged on that half.”