Abstract

Developing more efficient and better components as well as processes are the main concerns of the engineering disciplines. Therefore, they have multiple applications in the wine industry. In this chapter we focus on wine fermentations, which in our opinion is the heart of a wine cellar. We will first describe some simple kinetic models which simulate the evolution of the fermentation. We will then explain how to use simple models to design and manage the cooling demand in a cellar, illustrating the procedure with a real case study. An EXCEL spreadsheet with the calculation details of this case study can be requested from the authors. In addition to being the most important operation in a winery, wine fermentation is a complex process where often the expected results are not achieved and sometimes the process fails completely. Therefore, this chapter not only mentions the standard methods to monitor and control wine making, but also discusses how spectroscopic methods can help achieve more reproducible and better fermentations. In a case study we illustrate how these methods are applied to monitor fructose and ethanol during a complete wine fermentation.