practicePunching down
also: Pigeage · Punch-down
Pushing the floating cap of skins back under the wine, by foot or by plunger, several times a day. Pinot's cap rises fast and dries out if nobody moves it.
How it is done Tradition
Punching down extracts more gently than pumping over; it also warms the ferment and pushes oxygen in. Count and timing are how a cellar sets tannin without over-extracting a grape that has little to spare.
Facts
| kind | ferment |
|---|---|
| region | Burgundy, The world |
| confidence | medium · updated 2026-09-16 |
Its kin
practiceWhole clusterWhat a foot meets when the stems stay in.and of this page it says: The other half of the same fermentation decision.practiceSaignéeThe other lever for concentration, pulled before fermentation.wordPigeageThe word itself.and of this page it says: The practice, at length.
Sources
Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.