Pumping Over

A process during the FERMENTATION of red wine in which the juice is pumped from the bottom of the container to the top and then sprayed over the CAP of skins to break it up and keep it wet. By trickling through this mass of skins, the juice picks up even more COLOR, flavor, and TANNIN. Pumping over also helps prevent the growth of undesirable bacteria that might spoil the wine or create off flavors.

Compared in size to the Napa Valley, Bordeaux is:

A. Eight times larger than the Napa Valley

B. Two times larger than the Napa Valley

C. About the same size as the Napa Valley

D. Half as big as the Napa Valley

Bordeaux is one of the largest fine wine regions in the world. By comparison, the Napa Valley is tiny. With fewer than 50,000 acres of vines, Napa Valley produces just 4 percent of all the wine made in California.

“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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