Gentle Flavor Restoration for your wine.

Aggressive winemaking, where a winemaker is taking risks to maximize flavor and expression can often lead to various taints, including volatile acidity, high alcohol and Brettanomyces. Mother Nature can also interfere in the winemaking process with ill-timed rain and the occasional forest fire. In any of these cases, Winesecrets' reverse osmosis technology is available to restore these sought-after characteristics.

Reverse osmosis for selective wine filtration was patented in 1992 for volatile acidity (VA) and alcohol removal in wine. Since then, its use has been expanded to remove off-aroma compounds from "Brett" and smoke and to remove rainwater from juice prior to fermentation.

Reverse osmosis is an engineering term for filtration through a flavor and color-retentive membrane. Unlike traditional filtration, reverse osmosis is a cross-flow process where only very small particles (molecules) pass through the membrane, leaving flavor and aroma constituents untouched. The membrane filtration is 10,000 time tighter than a sterile filter allowing only water, alcohol, acetic acid, ethyl acetate and some lactic acid to pass through the system. Because of the extremely small pore size of the membrane, a normal filtration system would plug instantaneously. The cross-flow action of the system, whereby a constant high velocity stream of wine is constantly washing the surface of the membrane, keeps the membrane from fouling and allows commercial flow rates for wine treatment.

The selective nature of reverse osmosis allows for treatment of specific taint compounds. In the case of acetic acid and ethyl acetate (VA), only the taint components, water and alcohol are treated with ion exchange to remove the VA, leaving the aroma and flavor compounds untouched. Similarly, other taints are treated as they pass through a selective membrane, preventing the delicate sensory characters from treatment. With juice concentration, only water passes through the membrane, leaving sugar and flavor intact.