Provins' new winemaking facility

Starting this autumn, Provins will be working with an entirely revised system for receiving the harvest, and will have a new centre for wine making and wine storage – the largest and most modern in Switzerland. The work began in March 2009 and has been completed according to plan and on budget. This new facility will allow Provins to improve both quality and efficiency.

Following the opening of the «Espaces Clients», or customer centres, in Sion, Sierre and Leytron last spring, the fitting out of the technical side is now complete. The Sion site means that Provins now has the biggest and most modern winemaking facility in the country, with a capacity of 14.7 million litres.

An entirely rethought process
The system rationalization has made it possible to improve both quality (notably thanks to the almost unlimited possibilities for sorting the harvest) and efficiency (better utilization of resources and a reduction in the costs of maintenance and energy).
From 16 September (the date that this year’s harvest begins), Provins members will deliver their entire harvest to one of three reception sites at Conthey, Leytron or Noës/Sierre. These reception stations check the weight and the quality of the winegrowers’ deliveries and carry out a preliminary sort according to criteria laid down by the technical department. The data pertaining to each delivery are electronically recorded on each batch of the harvest. Next, the grapes are sent to Sion where 25 sorting lines are available. The data noted above are automatically read by a scanner that allows the operator to assign the «palox»* box to the right sorting line.

Cutting-edge technologies
Once at Sion, the grapes are processed in one of the four available winemaking lines. Each line is equipped with a post for destalking the grapes and pressing them; the harvest can then be automatically directed to one of the 400 fermentation tanks or one of the 13 presses. More than 1,500 metres of pipes and some 350 pneumatic valves are necessary to ensure the efficient functioning of the system. Overall, the nominal treatment capacity of these lines is 72 tonnes per hour.
The «palox» bins are then washed and returned to the delivery stations so that they can be reused by members. The winemaking facility consists of 115 tanks equipped with the latest technology, in addition to the tanks transferred from Provins’ previous cellars. Provins also uses more than 1,500 casks to mature the top range wines. The temperature and humidity of the cask cellar is carefully controlled.

Provins has ISO 14001 certification and has naturally paid special attention to the environmental aspect during these works. Particular emphasis has been placed on the treatment of waste water and on the process of heating and cooling the tanks. To reduce the impacts, Provins will use groundwater to regulate the temperature of fermentation in its tanks, which will make it possible to reduce the electricity consumption associated with this activity by 50%.
The completion of these works marks an important change of direction for Provins and equips the country’s leading winemaker with a high-performance facility that will allow it to secure the long-term future of the society and to remunerate its members for their grapes in an even more competitive way.
In order to allow everyone to find out about this new winemaking site, Provins is organizing an open day on 14 November 2009.

Sion, 10 September 2009

*a plastic container holding up to 400 kg of grapes