Automatic Control of Madeira Wine Aging Process

Madeira wine aging processes are slow and costly. Besides, the value invested, the storage space, the energy costs and temperature control must also be considered. It has been shown that the aging process can include a heating step under controlled conditions, which can decrease the time necessary to achieve the characteristics of a typical fortified wine. The temperature control inside the tanks in the Madeira wine storage, mostly carried out manually, is the most important step to achieve a high quality wine. This work describes the procedure developed to implement, at low cost, an automatic temperature control inside the tanks in a pilot scale unit. Five different controllers were tested, where the Direct Inverse Control was the one that shows the best performance.