Barrelwise Creates a Better, Smarter Bung By Ronda Payne Even for a small winery, barrel management can be a time-consuming hassle of removing the bung, taking samples, testing, waiting and topping up. It’s incredibly labour-intensive and Paul Gardner, proprietor of Pentâge Winery in Penticton, knew there had to be a better way. At 120 barrels, Pentâge is a relatively small winery, but its process of testing and topping up could still take upwards of 40 hours each test period. Fortunately, Gardner came across the work of BarrelWise, a project which was conceived by the minds of UBC students, including Jason Sparrow and Artem Bocharov. “It’s something I’d been trying to solve,” Gardner says. “Some BC kids have solved the problem. It’s been really neat to work with them over a year or more and see the evolution and the dedication.” Sparrow, BarrelWise’s CEO, explains the team that came up with the concept wasn’t from the wine industry, so they had no preconceived notions about the industry that they had to kick to the curb. They spent time learning about the industry and listening closely to winemakers.
The system includes specialized bungs for each barrel and a unique cart. A hose with a head unit runs from the cart and attaches to each bung to take measurements while also allowing for topping up in a single visit. Currently the BarrelWise team is crunching the data behind the scenes so winemakers get an autonomous experience, but as Bocharov explains, the system will soon be fully automated. “What we’re building on top of this is the sensing. We had to start with this first system,” he says. “We were in trial phase with several wineries for a while. Now their cellars are fully outfitted with BarrelWise bungs.” Pentâge is one of those wineries, and
Photo contributed
“We’ve been able to create everything we have now, based on what we were hearing from the wine industry,” says Bocharov. “We have a product almost built by the winemakers themselves.”
BarrelWise co-founder Artem Bocharov working on barrels in a BC winery.
Gardner is enjoying the reduction in labour and the increase in speed at which each barrel can be processed. He’s always tested every barrel for free SO2 levels, but as he explains, larger wineries previously didn’t have that option due to the time required. Some wineries test as few as five to 10 per cent of the barrels, randomly sampling some each month without a predetermined pattern.
“Every month, the barrel is having evaporative losses [known as the Angel’s share] that has to be topped,” Gardner says. “If you’re already going to top them, at the same time you may as well test them and correct the free SO2 level.” Without BarrelWise, testing would take more than 15 minutes a barrel, making it impossible to test every barrel in many cellars. With BarrelWise, barrels stay in Innovation 2021 29
