Wine pump VX136: improved pumping of must, wine & lees

Case Study - Cantina Salgari

Cantina Salgari, located in the Negrar Valley (VR), Italy, has been producing typical wines of the Valpolicella since 1840.

The customer was using flexible impeller pumps and piston pumps, which performed poorly during several of the fundamental phases in high-quality wine production, such as:

• Pumping over: using a flexible impeller pump, pump efficiency decreased when increasing the flow rate.
• Priming lees and must: several underground tanks (-3 m) were present in the cellar, and the client’s pump was unable to suck out the lees for transfer into fermentation tanks.
• Irregular and unstable flow rate: alternating between a flexible impeller pump and a piston pump, the pumping action was not constant due to the technical limitations of these devices. The product also became very foamy due to being shaken during pumping.

We chose the wine pump VX136-140 QVVA which, with HiFlo^® lobes with 4 helical wings, ensures an efficient and constant pumping to increase the flow rate.
The pump-over phase is excellent, with no foam, and the product is delivered much more gently.

The customer is able to prime the lees and the must from a depth of 3 m and pump them into the various fermentation tanks, thanks to the pump’s self-priming ability.
The exclusive design of our rotary lobes ensures a constant pumping, with no peaks in flow rate. Thus, the customer can measure out the quantity of wine based on its needs, without it being shaken.