Creators of the groundbreaking GOfermentor automated wine making system are now offering the winemaking community an automated device that allows wineries to rapidly make samples to evaluate wine blends.
GOblend is a laboratory instrument that can automatically and accurately make a blend from up to four distinct wines within seconds, vastly improving the tedious use of pipettes and graduates in almost every winery – a methodology unchanged in decades.
“Most wines are blends – even single vineyard barrel trials require balancing,” notes Vijay Singh (founder of GOfermentor). “It is the winemaker’s art to make a balanced wine – this requires blending in different wines. With the GOblend, we are just giving winemakers a tool to make that process less tedious and more precise. Instead of making 10 blends in a morning using graduates and hand measurements, you can make 50 blends in the same amount of time with more ease and accuracy than has ever before been possible.”
Clark Smith, the well-known wine consultant, saw a demo of GOblend and says, “It speeds up precision blending to allow for more thorough trials, and its ingenious software tracks every blend with ease. Any winery truly dedicated to perfecting their blends should use it.”
GOblend Works Like This
The winemaker places samples of the component wines into four receptacles on the GOblend machine. The percentage of each wine to be used in the blend is entered into an app on a dedicated tablet provided with the device.
With a click, GOblend generates the blended sample in seconds. Accuracy on any component within the blend is +/- 1ml. Sample volume can be set from 50ml to 250ml.
The winemaker can then judge the sample and make adjustments to the blend. Say, you want to increase one of the wines from 5% to 10% and reduce another one to compensate. Enter the new percentage into the app. click on start, and your new blend sample is made.
Blend recipes may be stored and recalled later so the winemaker is able to recreate an older blend to re-evaluate. Blend characteristics, such as aroma, color, body, acidity, and tannic structure can be recorded for future reference. Blend recipes can be sent by email, printed out to the winery, or exported to excel for use by the entire winemaking team.
“This app and this process has changed my life,” reports Meera Singh, wife of Vijay and head winemaker at their New Jersey Sky Acres winery. “All those graduates and beakers I had to use … writing down the blends … accuracy was a problem using graduates and after an hour or so, you were tired of the whole thing. Even though you knew that the blend could be improved. Just too tedious.
“Now I can make up to 50 blends in a morning. And at the end of the day, our award- winning wines are the result of extensive blending trials. This is a critical, exciting tool for winemakers. I couldn’t survive without it.”
GOblend is being offered an introductory rate of $2,750.
Noting that this is competitive pricing for a high-precision laboratory product, Vijay attests that, “We want to make it affordable so small and big wineries can use it to improve their wines.”
Watch the video How the GOblend Works and the Winery Chat, Episode 8 “The Joy of Blending”.
For more information and orders, go to www.gofermentor.com/goblend-pro
