When Nick Nobilo began building his new Vinoptima winery in Ormond, Gisborne, he came back to Stainless Engineering Co Ltd, who he had worked with over his many years with Nobilo Wines, to build the tanks and other related stainless steel equipment required.

Nick had a vision to create a boutique vineyard and winery to produce premium quality Gewürztraminer wine, for which he would need a high quality facility. He came to us with a concept of what tanks he required, and through various discussions, concept drawings and preliminary quotations a final design was refined.

For the 2003 vintage we supplied:

• Ten 2500 litre fermentation tanks, which had pre polished internal surfaces and dimple plate cooling.
• Two 5000 litre drainer tanks, with dimple plate cooling and wedge wire draining screens. These tanks were required to be elevated to feed directly into a bag press, so a secondary storage/collection tank was incorporated into the lower section complete with interconnecting pipe work and sight glasses to monitor juice collection.
• One 26500 litre blending tank.
  

Over the winter the design process continued, with emphasis being placed on ergonomics, as the winery was being designed to be operated single handedly and aesthetics were also a priority. We supplied and installed the following:

• A circular catwalk system, complete with spiral staircases to the drainer tanks and an access ladder to the blending tank. This featured a full stainless steel construction with custom punched floor plates, brush finished exterior trims, hand rails with hot and cold water supplies, provision for concealed service lines and laser cut soffit panels.
• These catwalks were connected via stairs and bridges to two mezzanine areas with matching hand rails and trim details.

• A tube in tube heat exchanger complete with arch shaped centre section to match architectural feature doors.
• A drainer tank to bag press chute and movable curved access platform.
• A barrel shaped bottling tank.