Kits versus wine from crushing grapes

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Yes - both Spagnols and Winexpert in Vancouver.

Share some detail please! Did you work there or took a tour? There seems to me less information on the internet on how the wine kit is make than an nuclear explosion device. :ft, that makes me even more curious.
 
I had tours of both plants while visiting family in Vancouver a few years ago. I forget some of the details but it's a fairly simple process. They contract out grape harvests/crushing with various vinyards around the world and import the fresh juice in cooled containers to their plant. The concentrate is also done under contract at various locations around the world and brought to the plants. The juice is put into enclosed tanks, blended if it's a blend kit, then pumped through a piping system that includes a high pressure point creating very high temperatures to pasteurize it very quickly. I believe the concentrate is also added to the blending tank and not later on, but my memory of that is iffy. The resultant mixture is fed into the plastic bags, capped, put into boxes, additives placed in boxes, boxes sealed and carried to their warehouse for shipping. It's a very automated process. Production runs are usually limited to one particular kit a day. Unfortunately, the concentrate and blending information and percentages used are proprietary and not shared with visitors. I believe the concentrates may be quite generic except for the higher end kits, but that is just my thought. I did not see any grapeskin kits being produced and I cannot remember if they told me they were produced elsewhere or on site.
Sorry I cannot be more specific on certain parts of the process but this should give you a better understanding of how they are made. I find that Winemaker magazine has some good information on this and if you go to their website you can access many archived articles.
 

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