Brock's Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute is helping wineries calibrate their labs to ensure peak performance.

As Ontario wineries prepare to bottle their latest vintages, Brock University’s Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute (CCOVI) is helping them ensure their labs are working at peak performance and accurately measuring key components within their wine.

A CCOVI program titled Calibrate Your Lab enables wineries to test the precision of their analysis, helping winemakers know exactly what stage their wines are at prior to bottling. Wineries from across Ontario have registered for the service.

This hands-on program has winery personnel testing samples for residual sugar, pH, titratable acidity, volatile acidity, sulphur dioxide and alcohol. After wineries do the analysis with their own equipment, the results are sent to Brock and compared to readings from CCOVI’s own analytical lab, to check the accuracy and detect any problem areas.

“We’re extremely pleased with the response to the calibration workshops,” said Barb Tatarnic, CCOVI’s outreach manager. “We’ve set the Calibrate Your Lab sessions at critical times of the year – pre-harvest for juice analysis and for wine analysis, just prior to wineries bottling their final product.”

The Calibrate with CCOVI workshop series is designed to assist professionals in the grape and wine industry improve various aspects of their operations. Next up in the series is Calibrate Your Palate and Calibrate Your Sales and Marketing Team. For more details on the series, visit CCOVI online.