In response to Morgan’s recent post on Ch. Rauzan-Segla Trent asked in the comments
Morgan, Could the line in your picture above be an inert gas line, rather than a micro-ox line?
Since I’m no micro-ox expert, I passed along the query to Morgan in France. Here’s his response.
The same thought occurred to me, or that it was a temperature control thermometer. But typically, inert gas lines are going to be much larger than that line is, and in most modern cellars, the sparging starts at the bottom of the tank and works up, thus the efficiency of sparging with a gas like nitrogen. (pinotbogger: and Argon is even better) I wish I had a picture of the whole tank because it would all come into focus a bit better. This line was on top of the tank (also, not where heating and cooling panels are). These tanks had tops on them too, which is typically where gas cover is going to come from. Also, the connection line is almost exactly like those that I have seen on micro-oxed tanks in Australia and California.
Perhaps Clark Smith, the American micro ox guru could weigh in?
