Larry, Bruce and friends,

The main enemy of fermented wine shipped in bulk is bacteria. Certain
common bacteria turns wine into vinegar. Bruce is probably right about
stray yeast dying in the alcohol, although all wine has at least some
residual sugar which hardy yeasts can ferment. Contamination by yeast
might start a secondary fermentation, which would result in a crude
sparkling wine. Intentional secondary fermentation usually requires
special yeasts with high alcohol tolerance (i.e. "champagne yeast").
Wild yeast would not be desired, but would also be less likely to do
much damage to finished and stabalized bulk wine.

The favored treatment in modern wineries against both wild yeasts and
bacteria is sulfites. Any railroad wine tanks would be sterilized with
suflite compounds before filling, and such compounds would probably be
added to the wine to prevent refermentation or contamination before
shipping. When I was a home winemaker I used Camden tablets or similar
powders (IIRC it was potassium or sodium metabisulfite). I believe other
sulfite compounds are used commercially today.

Some of the multi-compartment wine tanks lasted a long time in service
(I remember a Roma car near Fresno in the late 1960s). This led to
several being preserved in museums. The Orange Empire Railway Museum in
Perris, California, has/had two, one with six compartments, and another
with four. IIRC, both were jacketed, insulated tanks. Sadly, they were
marked only with the museum's reporting marks.

Kind regards,


Garth G. Groff

ljack70117@... wrote:

Because when you ship Juice it will pick up WILD yeast and start the
wine making process. You no longer have juice. If you have ever made
home made wine you would understand you must kill the wild yeast
before it starts to work or you will have some bad tasting wine. Wild
yeast is every where.
Thank you
Larry Jackman
Boca Raton FL
ljack70117@...





On Nov 19, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Kurt Laughlin wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: ljack70117@...

IMHO it would be impossible to ship Grape juice
in bulk with out contamination which would render it useless for any
thing on the other end of the trip.

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