A Well-Known Family-Owned Oregon Winery

One of Lynxspring’s use cases is a well-known winery located in the state of Oregon. This winery has decided to take their wine production to the next level by introducing Lynxspring’s smart technology, smart equipment, and smart solutions into their family-owned vineyard. Enhancing the winery’s operations, custom panels were installed using Lynxspring’s JENEsys Edge 534 controllers for control of chillers and boilers at the winery. It included an on-site visit to complete the Niagara integration and verify accurate and seamless functionality.

Like many other agricultural growing environments, there exists a need in grape cultivation to monitor all of the various environmental elements from soil management and hydration including micro sprinklers for irrigation to filtration and temperature and control.

In addition, wineries today have a need to automatically control the various steps involved in the grape’s fermentation process. This is handled by controlling the chillers or the cooling tanks. Grapes producing heat during fermentation require constant 24/7 monitoring of temperatures through the use of Monnit temperature sensors. This can be regulated by automating a set of valves controlling small pumps that send water to your cooling tanks when needed.

The room temperature where the wine vats are stored can also be automated and controlled remotely. Your HVAC control systems and refrigeration systems can be set for pre-determined temperatures and settings help to reduce air humidity in the wine cellar. Adequate ventilation systems are also needed. Alarming and scheduling may be set to monitor dangerous CO2 levels that occur during the fermentation process to ensure safe indoor air quality by using Monnit CO2 sensors. Collecting vital real-time data from smart equipment integrated into the wine industry’s production process substantially increases response times that can impact and affect the quality of the wine.

Modern wine producers now use ground-cooled aging rooms and need to be able to monitor humidity levels to also prevent valuable wine evaporation occurring in aging wine barrels. There are benefits to increasing the relative humidity by using Monnit humidity sensors as this can reduce the need for topping off barrels. In fact, raising the humidity to 95% can often reduce losses of wine evaporation to under 1% per year.

The wine cellars in which wine barrels are stored can also be maintained via integrating direct digital control systems. Utilizing DDC controls not only gives wineries a higher level of control over their mechanical and electrical systems but safeguards the damaging effects of mold and bacteria forming from condensation on the outside of barrels.