Sparkling wine and carbonated wine – particular requirements on filling technology

At Novi Ligure, Italy, the Campari group has inaugurated a new plant which comprises eight bottling lines.
For bottling Spumante Asti Cinzano, Cinzano Prosecco and the other sparkling wines, Campari installed a line from Krones featuring the very latest state-of-the-art design for sparkling-wine bottling.
Due to its colloidal composition, the sweet Asti exhibits particularly extreme foaming when being filled. It was accordingly vital to reduce the amount of foaming at the filler, so as to avoid product losses and hygiene-related problems from overflowing wine. Krones developed a redesigned filling valve for this purpose.
Following the successful filling tests, Campari opted for a Mecafill VKPV-CF filler. This filler is particularly designed for sparkling wines which place high demands on the determination of the end of filling due to their foaming properties. Mecafill VKPV-CF guarantees absolute accuracy in terms of fill level. The double lift cylinder used here for control purposes permits the gas needle and the valve stem to be opened and closed separately. An additionally integrated correction valve serves to pass pure CO2 into the bottle neck once the filling operation has been completed, thus forcing the excess liquid back into the ring bowl through the vent tube. The filler hygiene is assured by CIP cleaning, plus steam cleaning of the exterior. The Mecafill is BLOC-synchronised with a twin-channel Variojet rinser, which flushes the new bottles with water and air. The machine handles three different bottle sizes: 375 ml, 750 ml and 1.5 l.