The first time you see an optical sorter operate, it looks like something out of “Star Wars.” Grapes roll by rapidly on a conveyor belt, and before your eye even recognizes a raisin, whoosh! It has been pushed off the belt by a puff of air.

In wine, this technology started with very high-end wineries. The first one this writer ever saw was at a Bordeaux house where the estate wine costs hundreds of dollars and even the second label sells for more than $50. Intense sorting to produce a uniform set of berries has been a goal of many high-end wineries for a generation, but that used to require a 10-person sorting table. In an era when temporary labor is more difficult and expensive to find, an optical sorter can be an economical move.

But for optical sorters themselves, moving into wine meant going upscale. We associate this technology with cult wines, but it comes from the low end of the agriculture business. WECO developed its first optical sorter to sort tomatoes. The first optical sorters used for wine in Europe were adapted from machines that sort blueberries. Today, optical sorters are also used for tree nuts, raspberries, potatoes and olives. These are high-volume, low-margin businesses, but even though expensive, optical sorters make sense for them.

In short, there’s no reason optical sorters should be limited to high-end wineries. And increasingly, they aren’t.

“We have the super-small guys, the super-luxury-high-end people making wine for football guys and people with private helicopters, all the way up to the really large wineries, the big names, like Constellation,” said Glenn Merdan, winery equipment specialist for Pellenc USA. “There’s a time savings; what used to be a 12-hour day they can do in eight.”

Merdan said some of the larger wineries run their harvested grapes through the optical sorter faster than the suggested rate that the Pellenc machine can handle, which is 12 tons per hour.

“Some customers run it at 16 or 18 tons per hour,” Merdan told Grape & Wine Magazine. “But at that rate, there’s so much fruit on the belt that the camera can’t see it underneath. For some customers that’s enough. They just want a quality improvement.”

After you do the capital outlay, it’s quite a bit cheaper. We’re not paying for labor on an hourly basis.
– Stephen Cruzan, Titus Vineyards

What Is an Optical Sorter, and How Does It Work?
An optical sorter is a mechanical sorting table that uses a digital camera and software to recognize anything other than a perfectly shaped, perfectly colored berry. The sorter pushes anything it doesn’t recognize off the belt with a puff of air.

Most optical sorters have multiple settings that allow a winery to decide just how finicky it wants to be. Pellenc’s, for example, has four settings. Merdan said at level one, the sorter rejects leaves, stems and MOG (material other than grapes). Level two has a raisin-rejection mode and has a color slider so wineries can decide to reject light-colored berries in red wine. Levels three and four are like level two, only much stricter.

“At level three, you specifically have the option to shoot a perfect berry with a little stem attached,” Merdan said. “Most customers run at level three with raisin mode. Then with their $200 Cab that they want perfect, they’ll run level four. We see more good berries rejected in level four, but you get a caviar bin.”

Merdan said he has a customer in Canada who makes different levels of reserve wine based purely on the different sorting levels.

It is possible to run the rejected fruit back through the sorter, but Merdan said most wineries don’t do that. However, some do put level-four rejected fruit, which is often four good berries with a leaf in the middle, into a separate tank and ferment it for use in lower-end wines.

The crux of the device is the camera and the programming. However, there’s more to it than that mechanically.

A vibrating table precedes the sorting camera, spreading the berries out across the belt in one layer (unless you run it too fast) so that the camera can see them. (User tip: Optical sorters must have sufficient room light to work properly.) Pellenc’s is one of the fastest, but it is also one of the most expensive. Some machines top out at five tons per hour. The processing rate largely depends on camera and software, but users can adjust the rate.

“The air nozzle bar rejects whatever we set it to reject: little stems, little pieces of leaf, a wire clip, maybe a snail,” Merdan said. “Our machine doesn’t require any user calibration. It’s super easy. It doesn’t require a technician to operate. There are almost 100 air nozzles that fire a blast at a bad object that pushes it into a waste auger. The good fruit moves 2.5 feet per second. It flies across and goes into a bin or a must pump.”

Optical sorters may have different programming, but physically they all work the same basic way.

“We use the WECO system optical sorter,” said Aaron Pott, who owns Pott Wine Company in Napa and also consults for several wineries. “It is as good as the programming that goes into it. It is very good for raisins and MOG if adjusted correctly. Jacks are more difficult as they are often attached to perfectly good berries.”

Are Used Machines Worthwhile?
An obvious issue with optical sorters is cost. A new Pellenc sorter costs more than $100,000. WECO and Bucher Vaslin have models that are cheaper but still cost more than a new sports car.

Stephen Cruzan, winemaker for Titus Vineyards in Napa, was able to buy Chappellet’s old machine, a Key Technology Vitisort, in time for the 2023 vintage.

The Vitisort for wineries is no longer produced. Large agricultural equipment company Duravant, which also owns WECO, bought Key Technology in 2018. Key still makes optical sorters, but not for winegrapes anymore.

Optical sorting technology advances rapidly, so a machine manufactured in 2015 may not have all the control features of one produced today. Also, sourcing replacement parts could be an issue. But there’s a huge difference in price.

“We looked at buying a WECO. Those are $80,000,” Cruzan said. “For us, I couldn’t quite make that make sense. It’s not just $80,000. You have to buy an air compressor and do some upgrades. Ultimately, that didn’t pencil out for us. Buying the used machine was about $18,000. We were able to pay for it in two vintages.”

When writing this article, I went to four online sites for used winery equipment but did not see any optical sorters listed. You may have to know someone. It might be worth sidling up to your friends at high-end wineries and asking if they are thinking about upgrading their own.

Cruzan wasn’t a complete believer in the technology until he tried it.

“Prior to 2023, we had done everything hand-sorting,” Cruzan said. “We could do a decent job of targeting jacks and petioles. Anything that was green could really stand out to the people that were sorting. We could slow the machine down and catch it. But now that we’ve worked with the Vitisort for two vintages, we can go about twice as fast with our crushing. The sorting we’re doing is considerably better than we were ever doing before. After you do the capital outlay, it’s quite a bit cheaper. We’re not paying for labor on an hourly basis.”

Most Important for Red Wines
It’s possible to use an optical sorter to make white and sparkling wine. But most wineries use them solely for red wines.

Schramsberg Vineyards in Calistoga makes some of the best sparkling wines in California. Schramsberg President Hugh Davies says he’s very happy with the Pellenc Selectiv’ Process Vision 3 he bought two years ago for his Cabernet brand, Davies Vineyards.

“It does a nice job of screening out the runt berries or raisins,” Davies said. “It does it so quickly that it saves on labor costs, but it also does it very efficiently. It’s really amazing.”

But Davies doesn’t see the point in using it for the company’s sparkling wines, because the juice and skins (and MOG) will be separated very quickly in the winemaking process, instead of soaking together for two weeks as they might for red wines.

“There everything is loaded into the press,” Davies said. “It’s whole cluster. We’re not fermenting in contact with the skins. We’re pressing the juice out. It’s a completely different process.”

Davies also said because grapes for sparkling are picked earlier, they tend to be firmer, with fewer broken berries. And, he said, optical sorters are best for destemmed grapes because the sorter can then treat lingering stems as something to be removed.

Schramsberg does use the optical sorter for some batches of Pinot Noir that go into its sparkling rosés. But he said even for still wines, he changes the setting for less rigorous sorting of Pinot than Cabernet.

“Generally speaking, we are screening out a little bit less on the Pinot side,” Davies said. “We’re picking a little less ripe; around 14% alcohol is targeted. You’re not going to have quite as many raisins. With Pinot Noir, we might have a little more tolerance for green berries as well. On the Cab side, we accept fewer green berries. We’re picking it riper so you’re going to be kicking out a little bit more, up to 5%.”

This Year Mildew, Next Year Raisins
The adjustability of optical sorters is important because every vintage presents a different problem to be sorted out.

In a rainy year, broken berries should be avoided because they could have mildew. Newer machines can be set to recognize berries by the shape. Berries that are not perfectly round can be assumed compromised and are rejected.

Increasingly, though, excess heat is the greater problem facing West Coast wineries. Heat waves can cause winegrapes to shrivel into raisins. A generation ago, this might not have been a problem. Essentially, Mother Nature is recreating the “appassimento” grape-drying process used to make Amarone. But raisins raise the potential alcohol of wine at a time when many wineries are striving for greater balance.

“We can target raisins; we can’t eliminate 100% of them but we can eliminate most of them,” Cruzan said. “That became especially important in 2024 after that extensive heat wave we had in September.”

Merdan said developing Raisin Mode was one of Pellenc’s most important upgrades between its original version and the current machine.

“In 2022, we added a special raisin-rejection mode: Super Raisin Mode,” Merdan said. “We have a built-in safety for if we have a good berry right next to the raisin because that’s a net loss. We would normally skip that raisin because it would reject the good berry. But in raisin-rejection mode, it would push that raisin out. You’ll have more good berries in the rejection bin.

“In ’22, we had a big heat wave,” Merdan said. “We had a lot of raisins, and people wanted to make sure they got rid of all the raisins, even at the cost of good berries. Our customers are okay with sacrificing for a clean bucket of fruit.”

That said, some wineries still prefer to sort winegrapes the old-fashioned way.

“No, we are not using an optical sorter,” said Georg Salzner, president of Castello di Amorosa in Calistoga. “We are a medieval castle.”

Non-alcoholic products are up double digits,” said Jon Berg, vice president of BevAI thought leadership at NIQ, speaking to an audience at a Unified Wine & Grape Symposium panel on low- and no-alcohol wines January 28 in Sacramento.

“That 27% is driving what we think is going to be well over a billion dollars by the end of the year in retail takeaway,” he said, reminding the audience NIQ stats count only store purchases, not on-premise sales.

Who’s buying low- or no-alcohol wines? “93% of no-alcohol  buyers are purchasing alcohol products,” he said, a pattern that the industry has nicknamed Zebra striping, or alternating purchase. “That’s what the consumers’ preference is, a pacing of moderate drinking.”

NIQ reports wine has only an 11% share of the no-alcohol market, up 27% over the previous year. The no-alcohol category is dominated by beer, with no-alcohol spirits trailing wine.

Berg’s data showed that Boomers and Millennials are buying the most no-alcohol purchases, with Generation X not far behind. Only 8% are Gen Z buyers.

Growing Market
“If you’re looking for work, the volume is in the no-alcohol space. Look no further than those people that are already consuming beer, wine and spirits,” Berg said.

In conclusion, he stated that no-alcohol buyers spend more on total alcohol, averaging a spend of $700 compared to $487 for those who solely buy alcohol.

His presentation kicked off the session titled, “No- and Low-Alcohol Winemaking: Market Insights, Chemical Dynamics and Industry Perspectives” at the Unified Symposium moderated by Steven Kukesh, director of winemaking research and development at Delicato Family Wines, with three panelists:

• Rita Hansen, senior director of distillation and beverage making for Gallo

• James Conery, innovation brewmaster at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

• Jim Harbertson, associate professor of enology at Washington State University’s Wine Science Center in Richland

The session included several no-alcohol products that are popular in the current market, tasting both Gallo’s High Noon in kiwi and in pear flavors from (4.5% alcohol) as well as Sierra Nevada’s Trail Pass (0.5% alcohol) IPA and Brewveza.

Hansen noted alternative packaging for convenience was key, whether it was cans, tetra or PET. Panelists also said these products have shorter shelf-life spans.

What makes for success in making canned wine? “The most important compound for predicting can failure, corrosion and off aromas was the neutral or “molecular” form of sulfur dioxide (SO₂),” she said. “The plastic lining of the can interior did not fully stop the interaction between molecular SO₂ and aluminum, resulting in the production of hydrogen sulfide (H₄S), the source of rotten egg smell.”

Missing the Taste of Alcohol Harbertson has been studying the role of alcohol in sensory and chemistry, working in the Washington wine industry back in a time when consumers wanted more alcohol.

“We wanted bigger mouth feel,” he said. “The industry wanted to know, ‘What’s the right time to pick? How do I get all those aspects of the wine so I can make the big alcohol wine with all the flavors that I’m really looking for?’

“We were essentially trying to cope with riper fruit because Washington got warmer and warmer and warmer… and so from 2013 to 2020, we were trying to understand, ‘What is the relationship between ripening and alcohol and what we get out of it at the end of it?’ We did a lot of experimentation, pre- and post-fermentation adjustments.

“We can see the strength of alcohol in terms of what it does for the body and the mouth feel and all the aromas and things… alcohol, in all these experiments, essentially was the dominant sensory attribute that pretty much covered all the bases. You had changed aromas, changes in mouthfeel and changes in taste… essentially, the removal of alcohol has extremely large sensory effects.”

No-Alcohol Requires a Rethink
“Opportunities for new products are going to require a rethink… you may be able to start with wine or grape aroma extracts and build products with controlled amounts of grape sugars and acids,” Harbertson said.

“You might try for a wine soda, otherwise piquette… I’m sure in the hands of some capable individuals out here, you guys will be able to make something that’s actually quite good.

“You might be able to combine fruit juices with similar flavor profiles to accent or improve the flavor profile of something, for instance, Sauvignon Blanc and grapefruit juice. I’ve always felt that those two things are pretty nicely paired to each other.”

He published his research findings in his paper titled, Comparison of pre-fermentation and post-fermentations alcohol adjustments on aromatic chemistry and sensory composition of Sauvignon Blanc wine.

Case Study: Winemaker Alisa Jacobson’s First Foray into No-Alcohol Wine
One of the two co-chairs leading the program development for the Unified Symposium, Turning Tides winemaker Alisa Jacobson, who was formerly vice president of winemaking at Joel Gott Wines, just released her first no-alcohol wine. In a post-conference Q&A with Grape & Wine Magazine, she shared her first experiences in the no-alcohol world

Q. How did you prepare to make your first no-alcohol wine?
I did a lot of upfront blending and mouth feel enhancement. I use vacuum distillation. But what happens is when you concentrate certain flavors, you also really strip out the mouth feel.

That’s one thing Jim Harbertson was trying to get across with his presentation: We like the flavor of alcohol. It really lifts aromatics. And so in order for us to kind of recreate it, I went really heavy up front on the aromatics.

I used a blend with 5% Viognier to try to have this kind of over-the-top aromatic wine, so when we de-alkalized it, and the aromatics aren’t as present, that there is still a lot of a base to start with.

Q. So, what’s the difference between having something leftover that you want to use vs being intentional and planning?
I think that’s what’s been sort of missing is that the people have been using [no-alcohol] kind of as a side note, like, “Oh, we have a little extra, let’s make nonalcoholic out of it.”

Starting very intentionally was the other thing we were trying to get across with Jim’s research. There’s a lot of things to be thinking about. It shouldn’t be an afterthought; it should be something that you plan up front.

I think you’re going to start with a softer, sweeter mouthfeel, not sweet sugar, but just like really good flavor profiles, good aromatics. So, sort of big, voluptuous. A Sauvignon Blanc blend is what I started with, with extra lees stirring. You get some of that viscosity from the lees, so you can really start out with a big, voluptuous wine that you’re going to have to take the alcohol out, which kind of dumbs down the aromatics.

Q. What kinds of bigger flavors work?
People are looking at starting with a bigger wine, but make sure you don’t have flavors that you don’t want to concentrate. So, some tannins will be concentrated, and acid will be concentrated, for example. If you start off with harsh tannins, you’re going to get even harsher tannins after the process. You want to make sure you have a nice, well-rounded mouthfeel ahead of time, and it’s not too sort of astringent as stringent tannins to start with.

Q. What other varieties might you try next?
My next thing I want to do is either a Grenache or a Pinot Noir, something that’s a lighter-style red. I think some of the more stringent reds are going to be a little tougher to mimic the true variety. I’ve de-alkalized Cabernet before, and it’s a little bit more tricky because you get some of the greenness that gets concentrated. You get some of the harsher tannins that get concentrated.

Q. Why do you think sparkling wines seem to do better?
That’s pretty simple; people are using the sugar and carbonation to cover up the lack of mouthfeel. People do enjoy those, but people need more options than just nonalcoholic sparkling wine, right?

Q. What kinds of products will be used to make no-alcohol wines?
The suppliers are going to try to promote yeast that adds extra body and extra aromatics. They’re also going to promote nano proteins, which essentially are just extracted from dead yeast cells, as a way to get more mouthfeel.

There’s definitely people that are looking at which oak products can help, too. A lot of it is about building the mouthfeel back.

Q. What was the labeling process like?
If you’re producing 0.5% alcohol wine, you’re subject to FDA rules, not TTB rules. FDA is totally different. It took me a while to get through all the FDA red tape and figure out what I’m supposed to put on the label.

I was actually shocked how few calories my [no-alcohol] wine had in it. One serving size of my wine was 12 calories. And of course, that’s going to change quite a bit if you add sugar to it, so not all these nonalcoholic wines have that because of the sugar.

I went to the wine shops to look at other nonalcoholic wines. Every label was different in terms of what they put on it. You can’t just look up, “Here’s what you’re supposed to put on the label.” There’s so much information on that back label now that it looks like a beverage instead of a wine.

It has to say, ‘Alcohol removed.’ That has to be on the front label. You have to put the exact percentage on the front label. You have to be very clear about your serving size and the whole nutritional panel. You have to actually list ingredients and figure out which ingredients need to be listed. You don’t need to list anything that’s not residual in the wine. You don’t need to list yeast, for example, because there’s no yeast left in the wine if you filtered it. So, it’s just a little different than what you would have to do if you were labeling for wine.

Q. What’s the future for no-alcohol wine? What should winemakers focus on?
I think it’s worthwhile for all of us winemakers to try to put the best products out there possible. Nonalcoholic wines have a kind of a negative reputation so far, and people are choosing nonalcoholic beer or mocktails. The more of us that are doing it better and better will be a rising tide that lifts us all.