Development of an efficient process for the thawing of frozen fruit to mitigate spoilage and juice loss prior to wine fermentation

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Maan Farms Market was established in Abbotsford, British Columbia, in 1977. The family-owned business grows and sells strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries to the citizens of Abbotsford and across BC. The company expanded in 2013 by creating the Maan Farms Estate Winery, which uses these berries to produce an array of award-winning, fruit-based wines. The winery is located within the Fraser Valley wine region which has a well-deserved reputation for producing high quality, handcrafted wines with diverse varieties and styles, including unique fruit wines, sparkling wines and fruit-forward table wines. Fruit forward is a popular term used to describe a style of wine where fruit flavours are dominant. Maan Farms Estate Winery is currently experiencing difficulties with their existing winemaking process. Fruit used by the winery is often frozen and needs to be thawed prior to fermentation. The current process involves taking frozen berries out of the freezer and allowing them to thaw at room temperature, where they sit for a week to ten days before processing. Laborers then spend many long hours sorting through boxes of berries to separate thawed ones from those still frozen. The thawed berries are then taken to the next stage of production. However, berries such as raspberries, blackberries and strawberries lose a significant amount of juice through this process due to leakage out of boxes and onto the floor. This method is very inefficient and leads not only to loss of juice, but loss of fruit due to mold growth. To overcome this challenge, the winery seeks to partner with Okanagan College (OC) to research and develop a fruit thawing process that will mitigate product loss and maximize the amount of quality fruit juice prior to fermentation. Research findings from this project will benefit the company by improving its winemaking process through increased product consistency, higher product yield and reduced production costs, allowing it to remain competitive in the non-grape wine marketplace. OC will use the new knowledge for teaching and further applied research purposes.