More knowledge to savor: A new analyzer for wine

2015-06-22 | Corporate

Winegrowers value being completely in charge of their production – as it’s their decision-making, their personal touch that gives good wine its character. A new alcohol and extract meter for wine, Alex 500 from Anton Paar, now frees wine producers from the need for external laboratories. The reliable lab-grade analyzer determines their wine’s alcohol and total extract content whenever they wish. Now easily able to monitor their entire production from grape to bottle, wine producers can always be sure to keep their customer promise.

Anton Paar has been a partner to the wine industry for decades; by now the Austrian high-precision measuring instrument manufacturer is the world’s leading provider of alcohol and density measurement in this industry. The company’s latest innovation is the Alex 500 alcohol and extract meter, based on a patented combination of technologies: absorption measurement via NIR spectroscopy and density measurement based on the oscillating U-tube technology.

Alex 500 places winemakers at the helm of their entire production process, from fermentation monitoring to quality control of the bottled product. The compact, easily operated instrument can be used in two modes: In the fermentation monitor mode, it directly displays a fermentation curve, assigned to a tank via sample ID. At the end of the wine’s fermentation, Alex 500 can be switched to its standard mode, to determine the wine’s alcohol and total extract content with lab-grade accuracy.

Alex 500 measures alcohol with an accuracy of 0.2 % v/v and determines density with an accuracy of 0.001 g/cm³. With these numbers on their side, winery masters can be certain that their wine’s taste and quality always come through. Best of all, they can handle the entire measurement procedure themselves, to always be sure that their taxes are correctly calculated, their winemaking process is reliably monitored and undesired deviations in production are immediately corrected.

This speed is one of many differences that set Alex 500 apart from the glass hydrometers still commonly found in smaller wine cellars. In contrast to these, Alex 500 covers the entire wine measuring range, not just part of it. Producers are provided with direct, real-time results, without the necessity for a separate calculation or distillation. They only need one single instrument for all samples in their production – a really robust one that will not break. In addition, all data is automatically documented and perfectly traceable.

Winemakers are given a wide range of new opportunities by Alex 500, an attractively priced solution based on decades of wine measurement expertise. The difference is freedom – to reveal all grapes’ hidden treasures, in every winegrower’s very own way.