Glenora Wine Cellars
Technical Assistance for Improved Water, Chemical, and Energy Utilization
Glenora Wine Cellars on Seneca Lake, produces a variety of wines and hosts many events at their winery and inn throughout the year. Glenora was the first winery on Seneca Lake, opening in the 1970’s. Today, Glenora produces about 60,000 cases of wine annually and have over 65,000 visitors to their tasting room annually. Glenora would like to reduce the environmental footprint of their operations in Dundee, New York. The New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP2I) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) worked with Glenora Wine Cellars to evaluate viable sustainable replacements for current practices of solid filtration and tartrate removal. This project was funded by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and carried out from May to December 2014.
Implementation
Based on the work completed, Glenora implemented cross-flow filtration as a replacement process for their current solids filtration process. The use of diatomaceous earth and the risks associated with the handling of this material was reduced and Glenora can filter wine in a much more cost-effective and sustainable manner.
Opportunities
After performing a site assessment of Glenora, NYSP2I and CEEL specialists made a series of recommendations to improve the brewery’s sustainability strategy. These are listed below.
To generate less waste:
- Replace current solids filtration process with crossflow filtration. Cross-flow filtration makes use of microfiltration membrane technology that can separate solids greater than 0.2 microns. The main advantage of this technology is that all filtration can take place in one step with less labor and more wine saved compared to a traditional filter press. The cross-flow filtration system reduces solid waste from wine filtering processes significantly.
To be more energy-efficient:
- Replace cold stabilization process with electrodialysis (ED). Glenora's process at the time of NYSP2I's assessment required a significant amount of energy use for cold stabilization, losing 3% of product produced and using 107,000 kWh/yr of electricity. Implementing ED technology would reduce energy usage and costs by more than 96%.
