North to Canada---First Stop with Darryl Fields and the EuroSelect

When we were at the Wineries Unlimited Conference, we spoke with Mary Delaney of Bouchard Cooperages and told her that we would be attending a Winery Sanitation Workshop in Portland, NY. She suggested that we visit Niagara-on-the-Lake at the same time and gave us a list of restaurants as well as places to stay. We had other business in Ontario, such as visiting Criveller and EuroMachines so we extended our trip by visiting Canada. With passports in hand, we were welcomed at the border crossing by a torrent of hail.

The following morning, we met Darryl Fields(Vines to Vintages Inc) in the lobby of our hotel and he took us to see a new winery construction that he oversaw. Seeing this layout is instructive because this winery will be producing about the same number of cases that we will be. We saw how the winery was outfitted. We were especially interested in the EuroSelect, a new type of destemmer/crusher. The EuroSelect works by placing your grapes in a hopper. The conveyor belt which has holes in it moves the grape bunches up to two sets of "fingers" which turns in a direction opposite to the conveyor and gently removes whole grapes from the rachis. The speed of the conveyor belt as well as the fingers can be adjusted to optimally remove the grapes.