The objective of the final filtration stage is to ensure the removal of wine spoilage organisms that can cause refermentation, off flavors or turbidity after bottling. Typical wine spoilage organisms include yeasts, lactic bacteria and acetic bacteria.

Since wine final filters are the last filtration step before bottling, they are the most critical filtration step and will ultimately help ensure brand protection.

Wine final filters can be described by their pore size, 0.45 µm or 0.65 µm. Because the pore size does not indicate the reduction of microorganisms, a final wine filter should be validated for its reduction of bacteria and yeast by wine-specific microorganisms.

The term used to describe this retention is LRV (Log Reduction Value). The difference between log retention values is shown in the table below.

Wine final filters should also be integrity testable. The integrity test, a non-destructive test linked to the filter's performance, ensures that the filter is working as expected in the application.