Sercial (sir-SEE-al)

Esteemed Portuguese grape, today best known for making the lightest, driest style of Madeira.

Saké has a higher alcohol content than wine.

Answer: True.

The alcohol by volume (abv) of wine typically falls between 12 and 15 percent. Saké (undiluted by water) is generally 18 to 20 percent alcohol by volume, and one type of especially strong saké—Genshu—often exceeds 20 percent abv.

“It’s hard to talk about flavor. Tasting something is such a direct neural jolt; words will always seem clumsy and vague. ‘Spicy’ does not begin to express the riot of electrical fires sparking through your skull after you eat a Thai chile. ‘Sour’ hardly touches the way a fresh lemon grips your whole consciousness and squeezes until it weeps.

So we turn to metaphor. Elderflower kombucha is a bottled Scandinavian summer: mild, light, yellow, easy. Coconut water is a Caribbean afternoon. Chianti, as any sommelier will tell you, is the blood of a mortally wounded Vespa. … Coca-Cola is all the gallons of lighter fluid harvested from discarded Bics in the aftermath of a Bruce Springsteen concert.”

—René Redzepi and David Zilber in The Noma Guide to Fermentation (Artisan 2018)

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