Sparkling success in the Hunter Valley

Ian Peterson’s original vision was to produce sparkling wine from Hunter Valley fruit to mark special occasions in his own extended family. But since 1995, Peterson House has been producing fine sparkling wines for the wider commercial market.

When producing sparkling wine, variations in the final product exist for a number of reasons: the grape variety, fruit maturation and time of picking, the quality of the base wine, the winemaking methods used as well as the skills of the sparkling winemaker. The latter is an important element in the equation, for each winemaker develops expertise as they strive to achieve an average of 250 million bubbles in every bottle!

The ongoing investment in facilities by Peterson House now enables them to offer a range of winemaking methods for the production of sparkling wines to other growers across Australia. “We are now making sparkling wines for growers across the eastern states of Australia. From local Hunter Valley operators to Queensland and South Australian winemakers and vignerons, are using our services,” says John Reid, Operations Production Manager for Peterson House.

While their facilities’ capacity can handle large quantities of wine to cater to the bigger vineyards, they are also available to smallholdings.

Producing their own sparkling wine as well as fermenting and bottling for others, meant Peterson House had to provide not just a good-quality product, bottled and labelled, but they also needed to offer their customers the ability to trace every bottle throughout the distribution process right to the end consumer. Long journeys of this nature require permanent marking so John Reid turned to Raymax Applications to install a CO₂ laser for glass-bottle marking. The LINX SL301 is now installed on the production line where, after the drying process, each bottle is engraved with company information and Julian Code, leaving a permanent, traceable mark, while operating at a capacity of marking on 2500 bottles per hour.

The software used to program the LINX SL301 lets Reid make changes to meet customer requirements by simply entering the information on the handheld keypad. Information can be scanned in using barcode data, but Reid prefers data entry by hand, ensuring he is meeting his customer requests.

“Our strategy is to offer our expertise to others. So selecting a LINX SL301 to mark permanent identification codes provides our customers with traceability. It’s yet another service we’ve added to our expertise in the production of quality sparkling wine.”