The Lab

Sulphur Rigs

The lab has become my second home, or my home.  I have spent the majority of my waking hours in the lab at St. Hallett, so I will tell you guys about it.

Lets start from the beginning of the day.  We have to calibrate all the machines in the lab to make sure they are analyzing properly.  It would be useless to analyze all the wine incorrectly.  We use box wine to calibrate the sulphur rigs, pH/TA machine and the alcolyzer. I think it is funny because all my friends in college would drink the box/bag wine, while we just use it to mak sure nothing is going wrong.  We would never think to drink it, it is a tool, not a pleasure.

Alcolyzer

Depending on the time of year, the instruments will be used more or less.  During harvest, everything is used, but since there are a lot of juices we have to check the "Baume" (Brix) with a density meter often.  We also use the pH/TA meter a lot! That sucker has a workout everyday.  The sulphur rigs are always being used because knowing the sulphur levels in the wines are important.  No one wants bad bugs growing in the wine! There is also another machine that we call "The Stig".  We use it to analyze RS (residual sugar), VA, and malic acid.  It is a pretty handy machine and this way we don't use our spectrophotometer, unless the stig goes crazy (which happens).

pH/TA Machine

The alcolyzer analyzes the amount of alcohol in wines.  There isn't much more to say about that one.

This being the third winery lab I have worked at, it is nice to see the differences in what equipment there is.  J. Lohr, being a bigger winery, had more expensive machinery.  Ridge was smaller, so everything was manual.  St. Hallett is a good mix of manual things and automated things.

I can't really show you in a picture, but the lab is always blasting music.  It is a good way to keep going.  I love singing and dancing around!! We also love coffee.  Caffeine helps the world (lab) go round.