Quality Control
A note about quality control. We regularly prepare and test standards in the lab to ensure that our techniques and procedures are both accurate and precise. Each parameter that we test is part of a Quality Monitoring Scheme - a check and balance for every test.
If you have any questions about this, please drop us a line.
Cheers!
Contract Pricing
Save time and money all year by letting us take care of your testing needs. While we offer discount pricing per the number of samples dropped off, we also offer special discount pricing on annual contract testing.
Call us for details.
Shipping
DHL is our preferred courier. They routinely ship wine to customers all over Canada.
Sampling for Analysis
As someone who tests wine for a living, I never get tired of preaching to winery staff about the do’s and don’ts of wine sampling. Whether it be from a tank or from a barrel lot, getting a sample that is representative and consistent is of prime importance.
Tanks
The trend in today’s wine tanks is to build them long and narrow. This is great for utilizing space in the winery but makes getting a sample of the wine challenging. Autosamplers are devices that can grab a sample of the wine at any point in a tank. Wine collected from the top, bottom or racking valves can vary and possibly contain bitartrate crystals that can re-dissolve during transit. Generally the best point in the tank to collect a sample is in the middle. Wine sitting in a tank can stratify according to temperature of the cellar. Mixing a tank before sampling is also a good idea, especially after doing additions.
When sampling from the top of a tank, lower a bottle with a small opening (attached to a clean nylon cord) into the wine and allow it to fill as it sinks to the bottom of the tank. To keep the wine sample representative, match the time it takes for the bottle to reach the bottom of the tank with the size of the tank. When sampling from a racking valve, clean the valve first and then run about one liter of wine through the valve before sampling. This will prevent contamination from bitartrates that might have formed around the valve fitting inside the tank.
Barrels
Sampling from barrels is tricky too. When you’re 4 barrels high off the ground walking on the chimes, it’s easy to miss a barrel or two or just forget about the top row altogether (the top row might be finished going through ML a few weeks sooner than the bottom row barrels, so don’t forget about them). Again, here as with any type of sampling, you want to be consistent with how much wine you collect from each barrel and from each row of barrels in a particular lot. Be sure to have a sniff from each barrel you open to help give you a heads-up to any potential problems.
One note here: if you sample from a barrel that smells like VA or Brett, than do not use your sampling device again until you thoroughly clean and disinfect it first. Keep in mind that each barrel can have significant differences in chemistry and microbiology. One barrel will probably not be representative of the whole lot that it came from.
Bottling Runs
In general, the highest concentration of yeast, molds and bacteria will show up in the first few rotations of your filler at the start of the bottling run (assuming your filters passed their integrity tests before and after bottling). If you want the worst-case scenario of bottling contamination then collect the bottles that come off the line from the first few rotations of the filler. By collecting samples at the start, middle and end of your bottling run, you will be getting a good “snapshot” of how the wine looks in the bottle. Whether you test your wines in your own lab or at an outside lab, it takes time and money to get results, if you sample correctly then those results count for something, if not, then you’re left asking more questions than you had originally.
Minimum Sample Requirements
Test | 50 mL Tube | 200 mL Bottle | 500 mL Bottle | 750 mL Bottle |
pH |
| X |
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TA |
| X |
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VA | X |
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FSO2 |
| X |
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TSO2 |
| X |
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ALC by Ebulliometer |
|
| X |
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ALC by Distillation/Hydrometry |
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|
| X |
Paper Chromatography | X |
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|
Cold Stability (Conductivity) |
|
| X |
|
Heat Stability (Turbidimetric method) |
| X |
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Reducing Sugar | X |
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|
Brix (Refractometer) | X |
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Brix (Hydrometer) |
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| X |
Please note that we appreciate receiving more than the minimum amount of sample so that any analysis performed can be repeated as necessary.