Sorting

Sorting is a quality assurance step in wine production. When most people think of grapes, they imagine the pretty looking clusters of table grapes they purchase in the store that have been neatly trimmed and washed. While most wine grapes look just as pretty, harvesting can be a messy business and grapes often come to the winery containing damaged fruit or materials other than grapes. Wineries will typically set-up a sorting system where the damaged fruit and extraneous materials can be removed before entering into the process stream. This is especially true of top quality reserve wines. Grapes are typically loaded from harvest bins into a hopper and fed to the next point in processing by a conveyer or shaker table. Workers will examine the grapes and remove any unwanted items.