The Art of Cold Control: From the Wine Cellar to the Factory
For over forty years, Brunet Ertia has been supporting wine cellars and vineyards in managing their cold control requirements. This rare expertise, which has shaped the agency’s DNA, has been continuously passed on and refined, and is now applied to new industrial sectors.
The presence of a grape cluster on the Brunet ERTIA logo is no coincidence: it reflects the agency’s origins, founded in the early 1980s in Bordeaux, at the heart of a demanding wine‑growing region. The integration of ERTIA—Industrial and Agricultural Thermal Engineering (Études, Réalisation Thermique Industrielle et Agricole) into Brunet in the late 1990s, and its subsequent inclusion in the Ortec Group, accelerated its development and diversification, enabling this expertise to be deployed across other industrial sectors.
Expert in Thermal Processes for the Wine Industry
Historically, the agency’s teams have worked on thermal systems in cooperative wineries, estates and châteaux, ensuring optimal control of fermentation processes, which are essential to wine quality. This expertise in cooling—crucial for clarification, cold stabilization and fermentation—helps optimize the wine’s aromatic potential, while fully complying with the strict requirements for storage, preservation and temperature control.
« Our expertise in cooling production and process control is now applied across a wide range of industrial environments » Cyril, Brunet ERTIA Agency Manager
As viticulture is a living science, constantly evolving in line with consumer trends, the objective is to support producers in precisely controlling their processes—from grape reception at the winery through to bottling—using tailored, reliable and high‑performance technical installations.
Expertise Reinvented and Extended to Industry
Over the past fifteen years, Brunet ERTIA’s wine‑sector expertise has become a key driver of diversification. “Our expertise in cooling production and process control is now applied across a wide range of industrial environments,” explains Cyril Crassous, Brunet ERTIA Agency Manager. Initially developed in the tertiary sector, through the installation of air‑conditioning systems in office buildings, as well as maintenance and troubleshooting services, this diversification has gradually expanded into new, equally demanding industrial sectors, including:
Plastics industry: mold cooling
Food industry: breweries, chocolate production, industrial charcuterie, dairy products
- Renewable energy: wind turbines
These high value-added projects build on decades of expertise developed alongside wineries and estates. Today, this know‑how represents a key asset in addressing the needs of other industries and supporting the agency’s future growth.
Fostering the Transfer of Expertise
With around fifty employees based across Béziers, Bordeaux and Vitrolles, Brunet Ertia relies on a strong regional presence to ensure close customer support, 24/7 responsiveness, and a strong culture of internal knowledge transfer.
New recruits, most of whom come from thermal engineering backgrounds, are trained in the specific requirements of winemaking. “We train our technicians to the wine-related processes through hands‑on learning and a demanding continuous training program,” explains Cyril Crassous, whose teams quite literally live to the rhythm of the harvest season. From mid-August to mid‑October, they ensure full availability—a few critical weeks for wine producers, during which the quality of the year’s production often depends on the smooth execution of these key operations.
