Top Barrel-to-Barrel and Top Tank-to-Barrel

Wine, for example, slowly evaporates from each barrel. To maintain quality, barrels should not have a head space exposing the wine to oxygen. Topping is used to eliminate the head space. Topping is generally a recurring operation, for example, every 30 days. The performance of a topping generates the due date for the next topping. Topping may affect any attributes of the wine.

There are three basic types of top barrel-from-barrel operations:

• Self topping

  The wine used for topping comes from the same VBT as the wine being topped.

• Barrel ferment top from barrel

  This is typically done in conjunction with a sulfur addition simultaneously to stop fermentation. The addition is done as a separate operation after the topping operation, where the capacity is usually around 85 to 90 percent. A loss is not recorded.

• Barrel-to-barrel top

  Barrels may be topped with wine from another barrel.

Topping operations can result in a change of material type based on the configured operation. A change in material type can change the capacity type from fermenting to nonfermenting and vice versa. The system searches for material type information in the following order:

1. Configured operation

2. Before lot

3. VBT header

Based on the capacity type, the system recalculates the total volume for the VBT.

When you create a new VBT, the system retrieves the capacity type based on the To After material type that is defined in the configured operation. When you use an existing VBT, the system compares the capacity type of the existing VBT with the capacity type of the From and To After material type. If they are different, the system recalculates the total capacity of the VBT based on the new capacity type and replaces the capacity type of the existing VBT with the new capacity type.