For wineries barrels to store their stock in processing is one of the biggest expenses as well as one of the hardest things on the environment. Many wineries begin replacing barrels after as little as three years of use and the numbers are outstanding for how much this costs. With new barrels costing around $800 dollars many wineries are welcoming a new process that is allowing them to clean their wine barrels to get more years of use out of each.
Remarkably a new process has been used successfully to clean these wine carriers so that wineries can clean instead of replace many of their barrels. For five years now a company has been blasting used wine barrels with dry ice in order to remove mold spores, bacteria, and fungus. This extends the life of the barrel and allows vineyards to use them longer without leaving any residue inside that will affect the taste of the wine that will be stored inside next. Plus this cleaning process is much more affordable than buying all new barrels and will reduce the environmental impact that buying new barrels would have. Currently popular in the Napa and Sonoma wine regions look for the process to grow in use and become more widespread.