“The Lazy Winemakers” Wine and Craft Beverage News

In 2013, we decided to build a winery in NJ. It was almost not to be. My wife was horrified by photos of people cleaning tanks; punching down at odd hours of the night; cleaning presses, and other rituals of small-scale winemaking. “We’re retired”, she says. Next, the zoning officer said that a license was impossible. “You are in a rural zone – no waste water can be discharged. No treatment plant will be authorized ..yadda ..yadda”. So I got to thinking – why is winemaking so messy and water intensive. It’s because of the cleaning! This was the same problem I experienced in pharmaceuticals. That led me in 1999 to invent a machine– the Wave Bioreactor – it manufactured biopharmaceuticals in single-use bags, eliminating the whole cleaning/sterility/ water issue. My company – Wave Biotech, which I sold in 2007, made thousands of these. Why not apply disposable technology to winemaking ?

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