Winesecrets at a glance.

History

Winesecrets was founded in 2003 to bring STARS, an environmentally friendly solution for tartaric stabilization to the California market. The company accepted a grant from the California Energy Commission to prove the viability of this exciting technology. In 2005, Winesecrets won the "Flex Your Power" Award in the Innovative Products and Services category. "Flex Your Power" is California's statewide energy efficiency marketing and outreach campaign and is a partnership of California's utilities, residents, businesses, institutions, government agencies and nonprofit organizations working to save energy.

In 2008, Winesecrets acquired the reverse osmosis-based technologies and alcohol-adjustment services of Sebastopol, California based Vinovation Inc. The acquisition allowed Winesecrets access to other filtration technologies including Brush-Fire Smoke and Brettanomyces Taint Removal using Reverse Osmosis. Through various partnerships, Winesecrets has since added a wide array of winemaking technology to its portfolio, including Ultrafiltration, perstractive alcohol adjustment and cross flow filtration.

In 2010, the company entered into exclusive partnerships for leading edge winemaking technologies. Through Della Toffola, USA Winesecrets offers cross flow technology for wine and lees filtration along with the Thermoflash vinification process. Separator Technology Solutions provides Winesecrets with access to centrifuge hardware that is skid mounted and can be delivered to wineries along with west coast.

A Case for Winesecrets

In the coming years, American wine producers will be under pressure to meet market demands for wine that is forecast to increase by as much as 5% per year. It is questionable whether we will be able to expand the industries' infrastructure in time. Electrical use, water use, water discharge and land fill requirements have the potential to limit our ability to meet this demand.

Electrical

STARS is a filtration technology that uses an electrical field to remove organic salts from wine, a process known as cold stabilization in the industry. The current method for cold stabilization involves bulk refrigeration of the wine over a prolonged period in hopes these salts will fall out. The new filtration method requires a fraction of the enormous amount of energy consumed by the refrigeration method, making it one of the most important tools for sustainable winemaking available today. The California Energy Commission, an agency tasked with energy efficiency, realized the potential for gigawatts of energy savings if wine producers adopted this process. The Energy Commission offered Winesecrets a contract to demonstrate this technology to the wine industry.

PG & E estimates that between 1 and 3 kWH of electricity are required to produce a gallon of wine. If our industry is to boost our production over the next few years, wine producers will be looking for more electricity in a time when the State's electrical utilities are under mandate to reduce net electrical consumption by 10%. To succeed, wine producers will need to turn to energy efficient technologies. Hand in hand with the electrical savings will be an indirect reduction in green-house gas emissions, a hot topic in this state.

How we help: our STARS system can reduce a winery's electrical use by as much as 30%. The top 9 wineries can save enough power for 12,000 homes for one year and save themselves over $13 million in electricity costs per year.

Water Utilization and Discharge

Water promises to play an important role in California's ability to sustain wine production. It is estimated that 95 gallons of water are required for each gallon of wine. More and more wineries sip more and more water from the state's aquifers, and the water table is dropping in many areas.

Once utilized, waste water disposition becomes an issue. The favored method has been evaporation ponds. However, constructing new evaporation ponds becomes an expensive proposition, as it may require the removal of several acres of vineyard. For wineries in areas where vineyard land is not as valuable, urban encroachment is making that evaporation of high organic wastes and their attendant odors an unacceptable practice. The salts found in winery waste waters, especially potassium, prevent repeated use of winery water for irrigation.

Winesecrets has filters that replace high-salt processes such as ion exchange, and will ultimately be part of the solution as wineries seek to recycle and reuse clean water in the rapidly approaching future. The company's filtration processes reduce winemaking steps including rackings and multiple filtration passes, reducing water consumption in tank and equipment cleaning.

Solids Handling

We offer solids filters with permanent membranes as a replacement to all of the methods which rely on disposable filter media. Disposable filter media becomes solid waste, and as much as 2% of the wine being filtered is thrown out with the filter media. The new class of filters, known collectively as "cross-flow" filters eliminate the solid waste, and also, recover all of the resources we've talked about, including land, water, electricity, and waste water that were used to make the wine that previously went into the trash.

North America's Source for Wine Filtration

Winesecrets provides America's wine producers with separation technologies that improve efficiency, eco-performance and wine quality.

We deliver technologies to North America's wine producers with unparalleled service, expertise and dedication, meeting the growing need for environmentally sustainable production methods, and solutions for some of the problems posed by the changing climate.

Winesecrets offers a variety of wine filtration technologies. We learned that the most formidable barrier to the adoption of environmentally friendly technologies is capital investment. We broke this barrier by mounting the equipment on trailers, and offering these technologies as a mobile service, greatly reducing the cost of use.

Winesecrets' branded U.S. and Canadian companies operate in California, Oregon, Washington, the B.C. Okanagan Valley, the Niagara region of Ontario, Texas and the Mid Atlantic region of the US.

Winesecrets' services allow wineries to bring a wider range of wines to market in less time than is possible with conventional methods of wine correction and finishing. Winesecrets offers a variety of wine filtration technologies. These technologies include:

Reverse Osmosis (RO)

RO uses high pressure and very small (<200 Dalton) pores to separate small molecules so that they may be selectively removed without effecting the larger color and flavor components of the wine. Our wine reverse osmosis technology is used to fine-tune the concentration of alcohol in wine by alcohol removal, and for wine taint removal such as volatile acidity, wildfire smoke and 3-ethyl phenol. In must and juice, reverse osmosis is used to reduce water concentration, increasing flavor components. Volatile acid removal uses reverse osmosis to remove a variety of undesirable flavors from wines. Smoke Taint removal uses reverse osmosis to remove undesirable effects of the grape crop being exposed to smoke from wildfires. Wine concentration and alcohol adjustment use reverse osmosis to change the amount of alcohol in wine, either by increasing the sugar in the juice before the wine is made - desirable in cold climates - or by removing alcohol from finished wine in warm climates. Must concentration uses reverse osmosis to reduce the amount of water in the juice prior to fermentation to increase potential alcohol.

Selective Tartrate Removal (STARS)

Wine Electrodialysis provides tartrate stabilization, reduced titratable acidity and pH adjustment. Tartrate stabilization by STARS accelerates the traditional methods of cold stabilization while providing significant reductions in energy consumption. STARS uses a weak electrical field and highly selective membranes to transport organic salts out of wine. STARS replaces energy-intensive bulk refrigeration previously used to accomplish this separation. It has become a must-have tool for sustainable wine production. Wine pH adjustment, a new derivative technology of the STARS electrodialysis process, improves wine's color and flavor. Winesecrets is sole provider of this service in North America.

Cross-Flow Microfiltration

Cross-flow uses pressure and small pores to remove solid particles from the wine, while a tangential flow along the surface of the membrane prevents the pores from clogging. Wine clarification by cross-flow micro-filtration removes solid particles from the wine, improving flavor, clarity and appearance. Winesecrets' process is a readily portable replacement for filtration with diatomaceous earth, pads and other disposable media. Crossflow microfiltration provides clear wine with less loss and less stripping than filters with disposable media. Best of all, there is no mass of used D.E. or pads to be thrown in the trash.

Ultrafiltration (UF)

Incorporating cross-flow type technology we offer three different membranes sizes to achieve the customer's desired goal. Operating at lower pressures and larger porosity than RO, ultrafiltration has been successfully used but not limited to clarifying hard press white wine or juice without needing fining agents, legally concentrating weak red wine color and tannins, removing frost damage characteristics, and greatly reducing processing loss. Rather than sell your hard press juice or wine at a reduced rate let us help you increase its value or even use it for your own program. Unlike other fining processes that permanently strip undesirable characteristics, if you go too far you can back blend with UF.

Centrifuge

In a winery, a centrifuge provides "gravity on demand," allowing the natural setting process associated with solids removal to occur at a nearly instantaneous pace. In a centrifuge, the force of gravity is magnified 15,000 times by centrifugal force. Suspended solids, typically requiring days and even weeks to settle out naturally are removed within minutes.

The mobile centrifuge is ideal for settling white juice prior to fermentation, replacing cold settling and the time, refrigeration and SO2 that goes with it. Centrifugation removes post-fermentation lees efficiently and can hasten protein stabilization by removing bentonite once thorough mixing and contacting is achieved.

Thermoflash

Winesecrets offers a small-scale Thermoflash system for small lots vinification and capital investment investigation trials. The system processes 1.5 tons per hour and can be moved to a winery upon request.

Thermoflash offers an innovative method for dealing with problem vintages and conditions. The process can have a concentrative effect for low brix musts and can flash off underripe flavors and other aerosol contaminants.

Must is heated to 80°C and then flashed in a vacuum chamber. The flashing actually ruptures the berry skin cell walls, allowing instantaneous extraction of flavor and color promoting phenolics. Fruit volatiles are vaporized and then condensed and collected in flash water. Pyrazines and aerosol contaminants are trapped in this steam and can be evaluated by the winemaker for potential blend-back or disposal.

Locations and Hubs

Winesecrets offers its array of products as a mobile service throughout the west coast and in various winemaking regions throughout North America. The company also offers service hubs, where wineries can deliver their wine for treatment. Utilization of hubs reduces mobilization costs and allows wineries to access recovery of alcohol removed through the use of the hub-located distillation system.

Winesecrets Mobile Service Areas

• All California winemaking regions
• Willamette Valley Oregon
• Walla Walla region of Washington
• Texas
• The Okanagan Region of British Columbia
• The Niagara Region of Ontario
• The US Mid Atlantic Region

If your region is not listed, please call us to discuss how we can bring our advanced filtration technology to you.

Winesecrets Service Hubs

All of Winesecrets services are provided at various hubs on the west coast and in Canada. Larger, faster equipment is available at these sites and under many circumstances it is optimal to move your product to these service centers. These sites include:

• Sebastopol, CA: all services provided along with bulk storage of wine
• American Canyon, CA: Sonoma Wine Company. Distilled Spirits Plant License (DSP) Pending
• Graton, CA: Sonoma Wine Company. DSP Pending
• Santa Maria, CA: Central Coast Wine Services. DSP Pending
• Dundee, OR: Wine by Joe
• West Richland, WA: Pacific Rim Winemakers
• Oliver, BC: Hester Creek Estate Winery
• Paso Robles Wine Services

Our People

Eric Dahlberg

President & Founder

Eric Dahlberg grew up in Calgary, Canada, and graduated from Williams College in 1985 with a degree in Chemistry. He joined the US Army and was posted to the Presidio of San Francisco, where he assisted in a variety of medical research projects over the course of three years. Like many fresh transplants to the Bay area, he took an interest in the local attractions, including the region's wines. 1987 saw an early attempt to turn this new-found avocation into a vocation through a part-time position at California Wine Merchant in San Francisco's Marina district.

In 1989, military service complete, he began a career in the environmental remediation industry. He spent 12 years, much of it engaged in the efforts to recycle Northern California's military bases. In 1994, Dahlberg moved to Napa, and in 1996, helped to start Tarius Wines, specializing in boutique zinfandel and pinot noir. In 2000, he used the services of Vinovation to reduce the concentration of alcohol in the wines. Fascinated, he went to work for Vinovation in 2001, and six months later, founded Winesecrets to bring RO equipment to Canada's small community of wine producers.

Carl DiManno

Consulting Winemaker

Carl DiManno hails from Southeastern Massachusetts and graduated from Tufts University in 1989 with a degree in Chemical Engineering. As a process engineer with Shell Oil in New Orleans, he optimized gasoline and chemical production facilities, provided engineering review for the construction of two new units and developed and implemented several multi-million dollar renovations. While in Louisiana, Mr. DiManno attended Tulane University, graduating with an MBA in 1993.

In 1997, DiManno moved to California as a strategic analyst with Chevron Chemical. After a brief stint in Texas, he returned to California and settled in Napa. Mr. DiManno began the Masters program at UC Davis in 2001, graduating in 2004.

Mr. DiManno began working for Winesecrets in 2002 and has filled several roles including developing a thermodynamic model for the evaluation of cold stabilization, developing the Winesecrets marketing plan and establishing the company's east coast operation. He has served as Vineyard Manager and Winemaker at Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard in MD and established the successful consulting practice, Mid Atlantic Winery Services in Virginia.

David Sandri

Compliance/Project Manager/In-House Sales

Born and raised in the East Bay area, David Sandri pursued his continued education at Sonoma State University, Fresno State University and UC Davis. He has ranged over a wide spectrum of the wine industry in the last 21 years, including retail buyer, wholesale, tasting room management, vineyard operations, winery operations, logistics and winery compliance. It is in that last capacity that David has spent most of the last decade-plus, working with wineries of all sizes, and assisting them navigate the challenging waters of wine regulation. He is a regular lecturer on the subject of wine regulation at Sonoma State University, and has given presentations on many facets of the wine industry at other venues, including CIA-Greystone in St. Helena, and various groups in the Lodi region.

David has been published internationally, on diverse topics such as winery compliance, smoke taint in wine, and regional winery and vineyard history; he is currently working on a handbook on winery permitting and reporting (for publication later in 2011). In addition, he maintains an active wine judging schedule throughout the year, and is certified in TCA detection.