Food Safety and Wine Making

at Clearwater Canyon Cellars

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Topics:

Equipment Sanitation, Wine Care, and Record Keeping

Karl and Coco Umiker hosted this workshop at Clearwater Canyon Cellars, the winery they own in partnership with three other local couples.

Karl is a soil scientist at University of Idaho, and viticulturist.

Coco is a microbiologist and winemaker.

Appropriate winery hospitality was demonstrated with product tasting and testing before and after the workshop.

The Umikers are passionate about winemaking and viticulture in the region. Giving a brief history, they reported an abundance of vineyards in this region in the early 1900’s, including 80 acres in the Potlatch area growing 50 varieties of grapes.

A combination of consecutive hard winters (damaging and breaking many grape vines) during the Prohibition Era had severe impacts on grape production. Farmers lacked the incentive to repair their vineyards as prohibition was diminishing sales. As a consequence, winemaking was lost in the region.

The Umikers refer to Robert Schleicher as a resource on local viticulture.

It is the

Love of the Wine

&

Pride in the Grapes

that keep the Umikers going!

Karl discusses Food Safety in the Vineyard.

Highlights include:

1. Training vines to climb high increases safety in terms of dust and wildlife.

2. Cover crops decrease dust issue.

3. The major grape disease is Powdery Mildew

4. Fencing is used to protect the crop from animals.

Powdery Mildew Prevention:

1. Apply a preventative spray early in season, not close to harvest time.

2. Removing the basel leaves in early spring can decrease PM.

3. Keeping vines trained increases air flow.

4. Keep vineyard clean, no weeds growing on the vine.

Coco discusses issues of food safety in wine making.

There are no human pathogens that live in wine. The concern in wine making is chemical contamination.

Coco utilizes HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) is assessing food safety in the winery.

www.fsis.usda.gov

The winery is responsible for transporting the grapes.

The grapes are harvested into 5-gallon buckets and emptied into large vats. It is important to never leave the grapes or wine unattended.

Record keeping is essential at the vineyard and at the winery.

Record keeping includes who transported specific batches of grapes, which vat those grapes were put in, and when that vat was sanitized.

Things need to be visually clean before sanitation begins. Coco chooses chemicals that break down into pretty tame components.

Alkaline Peroxicarb is used in cleaning all tanks, tubes and vats.

She uses a lot of Hydrogen Peroxide, which breaks down into water and oxygen.

Wooden Barrels are cleaned with heat.

Sulfite (SO2) is an anti-microbial and anti-oxidant added to wine.

If you have 10 ppm (parts per million) or more for any food, you are required to label it.

Organic wine can have <100 ppm SO2 to be labeled organic.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is the federal agency regulating wine production. www.ttb.gov

In-house testing of S02 is done with a Sulfur Stick.

The sulfur stick is put in the barrel hole.

Peeking into a vat of fermenting grapes, we see red wine in the making.

In red wine production, the grapes are fermented with skins and seeds.

In white wine production, the grape juice is fermented.

Clearwater Canyon Cellar’s first wine from local grapes was in produced in 2005.

Currently about 90% of Clearwater Canyon Cellar’s grapes are local.