The biennial SIMEI trade show occupies a million-square-feet of exhibition space.

Milan, Italy -- Walking the million square feet of Salone Internazionale delle Macchine per l'Enologia e l'Imbottigliamento, Milan’s biennial exhibition of winemaking and bottling equipment, it’s tempting to be drawn into this booth or that by the lounge-like set-ups so different from the bare-bones presentations of many North American trade shows. SIMEI is also one of the rare places where glistening valves, tanks and pipes are presented like high-end jewelry, treatment that conveys the value these pieces can contribute to a successful winery.

But comments by speakers at the Nov. 24 official opening of the five-day exhibition underlined that the glittering equipment isn’t necessarily a sure path to gold in the current competitive climate.

 

The biennial SIMEI trade show occupies a million-square-feet of exhibition space.

Lombardy agriculture assessor Luca Daniel Ferrazzi was among those who identified the need for producers to take a close look at equipment in order to maintain their own -- and Italy’s -- competitive standing in a world where savvy consumers and, increasingly, China are changing the landscape.

Creating domestic capacity in a changing industry is key if Italy hopes to maintain its position, according to the opening panel, which also included Andrea Sartori, chair of the Unione Italiana Vini (UIV) and Alberto Giorgetti, an undersecretary with the Italian Ministry of Economics and Finance.

Similar points were elaborated this morning, when a crowd packed into a conference center in the Rho exhibition center just outside Milan for a lineup of speakers discussing issues of sustainability for wineries and grapegrowers. “Sustainability” went beyond treating the environment with respect to include the basic economics of making wine in a milieu that puts increasing demands on producers.

Today’s consumers demand information on the specific production practices used in winemaking, said Federico Castellucci of the International Organization of Vine and Wine. Producers must be willing to provide the requested information and use it as an opportunity to educate consumers about the factors that affect how wine is made, from site location to weather.

Francesco Pavanello, lab director with the UIV, said the union is developing programs to improve tracking and analysis of vineyard production. These include not just quality control programs but sophisticated aerial imaging initiatives and others. A long-term goal is an integrated food safety program that would follow grapes from the vineyard through processing to the cellar, tracing them at every step of the process.

The seminar on sustainability highlighted some new approaches to managing the environment, too -- hopefully with a view to reducing overall resource use and waste management costs for wineries. Among the most intriguing were the use of microbiology to cleanse waste materials of pesticides and other substances that could potentially harm the environment. Joël Rochard of Paris-based International Organization of Vine and Wine said filtration can help clean wastewater, but Swedish research is examining how microbes can remove contaminants from large volumes of organic matter.

Constructed wetlands are another means of dealing with effluent that may contain residues from the winemaking process that could damage the environment. The wetland would allow natural filtration of the effluent as it flows back into the environment.

Rochard noted that an efficient system for handling pesticide residues and other byproducts of the winemaking process could reduce water usage and make for more efficient wineries.

Representatives of Millipore showed off the company’s new Millichilling Normal Flow Filtration System, currently available only in Europe. The compact unit varies in price depending on size (a 7-cartridge unit was on display at SIMEI, but a Spanish winery bought a 48-cartridge unit for approximately 100,000 euros).

The system is an alternative to those using diatomaceous earth. A single passage of wine through the filtration cartridge reduces the amount of water, chemicals and energy filtration requires, and in turn processing costs. Wine quality also stands to improve. A closed system avoids wine oxidation while preserving flavor characteristics, while avoiding the use of diatomaceous earth reduces wine turbidity by more than half and improves overall color.