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. 

The Power of Pressure

Historically, retailers and food processors around the word have been using various food preservation methods to preserve different food items. The single most important purpose of these methods remained delivering the highest possible value to customers. Retailers strive to deliver the highest value to customers because of the consumers’ ever-increasing demand for higher and higher quality. Food value or quality here means freshness, appearance, and hidden nutritive value over the life span of a food item. Most often nutritive value remains hidden, but it is of the highest value among all the value creating contents of a food item. Various labelling requirements disclose nutritive value to consumers for better decision making at the time of buying a food item. Still, the term quality is more often than not unclear to customers. However, a customer is always in a position to judge quality of products at least while consuming a food item and at the time of buying a food item because of labeling. Thus, retailers always remain under “pressure” to meet quality standards to win the consumers’ preference to their food items.

The demand for quality has been robust and the standards of quality are moving up day by day creating pressure on retailers to deliver value to customers. Under pressure of demand for quality, retailers employed technologies to preserve food items. When they looked for appropriate technology, industry responded by providing retailers with new technologies and methods to preserve and package food for delivering the highest possible value to customers. By designing and developing machines and equipment, industry has always converted theory into practical technology useful for retailers in food niche. The industry has placed two important variables at the disposal of a retailer: temperature and pressure. In practical form these two variables are at the base of two food preservation processes: Pasteurization, and Pascalization.

Pasteurization: use of heat/temperature

Louis Pasteur told people that heat/temperature can preserve food when applied to various food items. Industry designed equipment for enabling temperature to work for preserving food items. The method designed was “Pasteurization”. This method dominated the food preservation markets since its discovery as an effective technique to destroy and control bioactive agents inside food. Pasteurization is also in use, widely across the globe. However, the dominance of “temperature” on food markets is in serious danger because of entry of “pressure” as an effective way to preserve food.

Pascalization: use of pressure

Pascalization, or high pressure processing (HPP), is a method which preserves food under very high pressure. The pressure is high enough to inactivate microorganisms and enzymes in the food that cause food deterioration. Rapid research and quick development of Pascalization machines are adding to the resources and power of the retailers to deliver value to consumers.

A food retailer making use of HPP technology has power pressure to preserve food:

1 - In a way that delivers maximum value to customers; and

2 - For a longer period.

These two simple outcomes of HPP technology have revolutionizing effects on food retailing. The effects are on the entire supply chain in food markets – from production to shelf-storage and even storage by customers before consuming a food item.

It seems, pressure will dominate food preservation markets in coming years; it has power to at least become major partner with temperature if the current technologies do not allow it to replace “temperature” altogether.