Commercial Sanitizers Efficacy - A Winery Trial

Winery hygiene is a key factor to wine quality. In this work the effectiveness of four sanitising commercial products over stainless steel tanks was evaluated at a pilot scale. To carry out the experiment a young, untreated red wine, with a very high microbial contamination was distributed by stainless steel tanks where it stood for 70 to 80 days. After that contact time, the tanks were cleaned with an alkaline detergent and sanitised with the four products under study in three concentrations (in triplicate). The monitoring of the process was performed by ATP bioluminescence and traditional plate counts for yeasts, lactic acid bacteria and acetic acid bacteria. Weak correlation was found between the results obtained by the two methodologies. Higher concentrations than the lower recommended for the two oxidising products (peroxyacetic acid and permanganate based) were necessary in order to achieve satisfactory cleanliness. Inferior concentration than the lower recommended was necessary for the products indicated to clean in one step, but it should be noted that in the present work a previous cleaning procedure was conducted.