Aging of wines under pressure

High Pressure Technology make younger wines mature in shorter time

The aging of wine improves its quality. This is one of the main differences between wines and other perishable food items.  Wine is also perishable and it can deteriorate like other food items. However, the chemicals like sugar, acids, and phenolic compounds are present in a wine. The presence of these chemicals and their complex chemical reactions alters wine qualities like aroma, color, and mouth-feel of a wine while undergoing the aging. This alteration of qualities makes wine more pleasing to its taster and makes the wine “mature”.

The factors that affect aging of wines for improving their qualities include:

1 - Grape variety;

2 - Viticulture Practices;

3 - Wine region and wine-making style; and

4 - The conditions in which a winery keeps wines.

The condition in which a winery keeps wines includes pressure. In fact, pressure is one of the important factors which affect a chemical in general reaction and the chemical reactions taking place during aging of wines are no exception. You can find some chemical reactions which do not even initiate without first achieving certain level of pressure. Pressure, if controlled in the right way, can make chemical reactions among sugar, acids, and phenolic compounds of wine proceed in way that increase qualities of wine while aging.

Bottle for Wines

Wineries use various techniques to achieve right pressure on wine during the process of aging. One simple example is use of containers inside of which the right pressure develops with the passage of time. This is of course not a single way of controlling pressure on aging wine. Another example is aging of wine in deep sea! Wineries place barrels technically designed and adapted to wine-aging in the deep sea. They choose sea depth about 20 meters deep with an environment good for maturing the wine and a pressure right for the process of aging. However, these aging processes require considerable time for maturing wines.

With the emergence of high pressuring processing technology, a new technique of maturing wine is available with the wineries. The new technique has shortened the time for getting wines matured. By the applying HPP technology, the manufacturing cycle of wines becomes a shorter period. The direct benefit is that the wineries get operational flexibility in manufacturing “mature” wines in little time. When HPP technology is in use, aging of wine is possible after bottling – another operational ease for wineries. However, it may require bottles suitable for the process e.g. PET bottles.

No one denies that wines need aging and balance. A good balance is where the concentration of fruit, level of tannins, and acidity are in agreement with each other. Wines with balance are symmetrical and tend to age gracefully resulting into high quality final product. However, even balance cannot achieve high quality in maturity if environment, including pressure, is not right in the surroundings of aging wine. HPP technology provides wineries with a resource to control environment of aging wines to age it gracefully, but in shorter time.