The coming harvest season brings a major innovation to Lagar de Cervera, making it first winery in Rías Baixas to have an optical grape sorting line.

The winery, located in O Rosal, Pontevedra, is concluding the installation of this technology that scans each berry individually, thereby only letting through grapes that meet the demanding colour, size and shape requirements set by the winemaking team led by Ángel Suarez. This implementation is yet another step forward in a search for maximum quality, as part of a process that begins in the vineyards with a meticulous selection and manual harvesting in small 20 kg/44 lb boxes.

The new optical sorting line is able to process up to 7,500 kg/16,500 lb of grapes per hour. It is expected to process the entire 2021 harvest of Albariño grapes owned by Lagar de Cervera (90.9 hectares/225 acres) as well as the Loureiro (1.6 ha/4 ac) and Treixadura (0.4 ha/1 ac) varieties used to make its two wines, the single varietal Lagar de Cervera and the multi-varietal Pazo de Seoane Rosal.

Now, all four wineries in Grupo La Rioja Alta, S.A. boast this sophisticated grape sorting system. It was first introduced by the La Rioja Alta, S.A. winery in 2015 and, subsequently, implemented at Torre de Oña (Rioja Alavesa) and Áster (Ribera del Duero). Its implementation in Lagar de Cervera will be accompanied by a new advanced temperature control system for the fermentation tanks.