Indevin HB class visit 2010

The tallest doors in the industry?

Wine Technology students were fortunate to visit Indevin last week - the biggest winery you've never heard of in Hawke's Bay. 4500 tonnes is a pretty good throughput, and the ability to handle it takes a lot of nice shiny toys and a purpose built facility now in its fourth year of operation.The winery is contracted to process Hawke's Bay fruit for Delegats winery, at least until they build their own facility, which may or may not be within about three years. (The economy being what it is, I don't think I'd put money on it, nor the previously rumoured replacement for Vidals, any more that the Springboks retaining the World Cup just at the moment).

There should always be a receival area in any winery photo portfolio

Unlike the Marlborough Indevin, the receival area for Indevin HB needs only one crusher, although it feeds three presses to ensure flexibility and the ability to achieve maximum efficiency of grape input.

Three presses - one fills, one presses, one empties

The mixed intake - 50:50 red and white, 70% of the whites being chardonnay, makes the intake regime quite different to the heavily sauvignon focussed Marlborough wineries of equivalent size. Harvest is more evenly spread out and demand on the intake front end is less that it might be at say, Oyster Bay Marlborough.

Nothing like some shiny tanks

lovely catwalks too

Red wine tanks have built-in pumps for automated pumpovers - finished ferments are drained, skins dug out to bins, then loaded onto the conveyor visible in the third pic to load the presses. Quite manual compared with the tipper tanks and rotary fermenters on at Corbans HB - in the interests of gentle handling?

spaghetti filter

Big investment in up-to-date equipment - $300,000+ for this CrossFlow filter, 8 modules of spaghetti filter elements at $12000 replacement. Each. So don't block them...

Ball valve

Red tanks feature ball valves to allow must to be pumped over without blocking.

Butterfly valve

Butterfly is more hygienic for long term storage as no wine is trapped within the valve when it is closed...