Reply To Blog

Tell A Friend

Werner Els, May 10 2012

Share It »

In the wine industry we use wine barrels up to five times and each time that the barrel is emptied, we need to washed and sterilised before the next vintage could be aged in them.

However barrel cleaning is no simple task. It is done with the use of a pressure washer that is inserted into the bunghole of upside-down barrel. With a nozzle that rotate 360 degrees shoots a jet of hot or cold water that will rinse out unwanted lees, soften hard potasium tartrate crystals as well as remove wine that has soaked deep into the wood fibres.

By cleaning your barrels properly, harmful bacteria will not develop in them and infect future wines that will aged in these oak barrels.