15.7 Quality Control Procedures

Question 1

How are new wineries designed to facilitate cleaning?

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

What item in the winery is potential source of spoilage organisms?

Answer 2

Pores in oak

Question 3

What are the main 3 procedures for winery hygiene? What does each mean?

Answer 3

1. cleaning – the removal of surface dirt
2. sanitation – the reduction of unwanted organisms to acceptably low levels
3. sterilisation – the elimination of unwanted organisms

Question 4

How is sanitation performed?

Answer 4

Typically with water and a detergent or other sanitising agent and/or steam

Question 5

For every litre of wine produced, how many litres of water are used?

Answer 5

10 litres

Question 6

How is sterilisation performed? Give an example of a part of a winery that needs to be sterilised.

Answer 6

with high strength alcohol or steam

• for example, from high risk areas such as the filler heads of bottling lines

Question 7

What is quality control?

Answer 7

the set of practices by which the company ensures a consistently good quality product

Question 8

What is quality assurance?

Answer 8

• 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

Question 9

What is Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points?

Answer 9

• 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

Question 10

Give an example of HACCP.

Answer 10

• 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

Question 11

How is HACCP typically carried out?

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

What costs are associated with HACCP?

Answer 12

• considerable time investment; thus, costly

Question 13

Other than HACCP, how can producers control quality?

Answer 13

• external audit of their quality processes

- external quality certification

Question 14

What is ISO?

Answer 14

International Organization for Standardization

- recognised external body that performs audits of a winery’s quality standards

Question 15

What is the purpose of ISO?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

How does the ISO work?

Answer 16

• ISO sets the standards (ISO 9000 and 9001)

- separate certification bodies carry out the audits

Question 17

How are the audits performed?

Answer 17

• 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

Question 18

In addition to ISO, what other types of audits may be required by large retailers?

Answer 18

• environmental policy or ethical trading

Question 19

Why might traceability be important to a winery?

Answer 19

Helps winery to:

1. respond to and investigate complaints about wine
2. improve its practice so that similar problems do not occur in the future.

Question 20

How is traceability done?

Answer 20

• 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)

Question 21

Where is traceability required?

Answer 21

EU and many other markets

Question 22

What might larger firms do to help during traceability?

Answer 22

• keep samples of every batch so that they can investigate what has gone wrong and compare returned bottles with their library of samples

Question 23

Name some common problems traced during traceability.

Answer 23

• cork taint
• tartrate crystals
• faulty or missing labels