15.7 Quality Control Procedures Flashcards
How are new wineries designed to facilitate cleaning?
- the use of easy-to-clean stainless steel
- hard non-porous floor surfaces that slope to aid drainage
- equipment being located so that it can be reached to be cleaned
What item in the winery is potential source of spoilage organisms?
Pores in oak
What are the main 3 procedures for winery hygiene? What does each mean?
- cleaning – the removal of surface dirt
- sanitation – the reduction of unwanted organisms to acceptably low levels
- sterilisation – the elimination of unwanted organisms
How is sanitation performed?
Typically with water and a detergent or other sanitising agent and/or steam
For every litre of wine produced, how many litres of water are used?
10 litres
How is sterilisation performed? Give an example of a part of a winery that needs to be sterilised.
with high strength alcohol or steam
- for example, from high risk areas such as the filler heads of bottling lines
What is quality control?
the set of practices by which the company ensures a consistently good quality product
What is quality assurance?
- a broader concept than quality control
- the complete way a business organises itself to deliver a good product consistently and to protect itself from legal challenge
Includes:
- planning
- management systems
- monitoring and recording of key standards from vineyard to bottling
What is Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points?
- aka HACCP
- a common approach to quality assurance regarding significant threats to the safety of consumers and to the reputation of a wine company
- a process in which the company identifies all the possible hazards that could affect final wine quality
- for each hazard, the HACCP document will state how serious it is, how it can be prevented, and how it can be corrected
Give an example of HACCP.
- What could go wrong: In a bottling line there is a possible hazard of glass breaking and ending up in a bottle of wine, a threat to the health of the consumer
- Preventive action plan: Have a system in place to detect a broken bottle and to push out the next three neighbouring bottles automatically
How is HACCP typically carried out?
- By the company producing the wine with no checking or auditing by a third party
- HACCP plan itself and the actions taken to implement it are available for inspection
What costs are associated with HACCP?
- considerable time investment; thus, costly
Other than HACCP, how can producers control quality?
- external audit of their quality processes
- external quality certification
What is ISO?
International Organization for Standardization
- recognised external body that performs audits of a winery’s quality standards
What is the purpose of ISO?
Give assurance to all the parties down the supply chain: the wholesaler and the retailers who will sell the wine and, finally, the end consumer
How does the ISO work?
- ISO sets the standards (ISO 9000 and 9001)
- separate certification bodies carry out the audits
How are the audits performed?
- External auditors from the certification body will review the company’s:
1. own quality management system
2. management structure
3. physical and human resources
4. how it measures, analyses and improves its performance
In addition to ISO, what other types of audits may be required by large retailers?
- environmental policy or ethical trading
Why might traceability be important to a winery?
Helps winery to:
- respond to and investigate complaints about wine
- improve its practice so that similar problems do not occur in the future.
How is traceability done?
- each consignment of wine given a lot number (appears on bottle)
- enables a company to trace back where the grapes came from, what additives have been used and what processes the wine went through
- winery must keep records of activities at every point of its production (vineyard, winery, transportation)
Where is traceability required?
EU and many other markets
What might larger firms do to help during traceability?
- keep samples of every batch so that they can investigate what has gone wrong and compare returned bottles with their library of samples
Name some common problems traced during traceability.
- cork taint
- tartrate crystals
- faulty or missing labels
