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

马安农场市场于1977年在不列颠哥伦比亚省的阿布斯福德成立。这家家族企业种植草莓、乌藨子、蓝莓和黑莓，并将其出售给阿布斯福德和不列颠哥伦比亚省的市民。该公司在2013年通过创建Maan Farms Estate Winery进行了扩张，该酒庄使用这些浆果生产一系列获奖的水果葡萄酒。该酒庄位于弗雷泽谷葡萄酒产区，该产区以生产高品质，手工酿造的葡萄酒而闻名，品种多样，风格各异，包括独特的果酒，起泡酒和水果餐酒。果味前进是一个流行的术语，用来描述一种风格的葡萄酒，其中水果风味占主导地位。马安农场酒庄目前正在经历与他们现有的酿酒工艺的困难。酿酒厂使用的水果通常是冷冻的，需要在发酵前解冻。目前的工艺包括将冷冻浆果从冰箱中取出，并在室温下解冻，在加工前放置一周到十天。然后，实验室会花很长时间对一箱箱的浆果进行分类，将解冻的浆果与冷冻的浆果分开。解冻的浆果然后被带到下一个生产阶段。然而，浆果，如乌藨子，黑莓和草莓失去了大量的果汁通过这个过程，由于泄漏出盒和地板上。这种方法是非常低效的，不仅导致果汁损失，而且由于霉菌生长而导致水果损失。为了克服这一挑战，酒庄寻求与Okanagan学院（OC）合作，研究和开发一种水果解冻工艺，以减少产品损失，并在发酵前最大限度地提高优质果汁的含量。该项目的研究结果将使公司受益，通过提高产品一致性，提高产品产量和降低生产成本来改善其酿酒工艺，使其在非葡萄酒市场保持竞争力。OC将使用新知识进行教学和进一步的应用研究。

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.