An Innovative System for Mechanical Harvested Grape Fruit Transport to avoid Must Chemical and Microbiological Modifications

Abstract

The mechanical gathering of grapes presents some negative aspects due to the must leakage from the grape damage, often stressed by the long period elapsing from harvesting and processing the product, as well as by the high temperature. In addition, the must presence in the harvested product, sometimes reaching 25-30% of the total product, causes inevitable drawbacks. For that reason, an innovative system of handling and grapes transporting was developed in order to separate, once harvested, the liquid part (must) from the solid one (bunch of grapes and single grape), thus to apply different working process on each of them. Thanks to this system, it was possible to isolate the must in a closed tank and thus, immediately, preserve it by dry ice or liquid carbon dioxide, with the addition of enological chemicals to avoid (sulphur dioxide, ascorbic acid and tannin) chemical and microbiological modifications. The evaluation of wines throughout tests and sensorial analysis, highlighted the better quality of the wines obtained by the proposed technique compared to the traditional one cause of higher presence of primary fragrances, better color, and a better balanced structure of the wine preserved by oxidation action.