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Blackberry Wine
Put any quantity of blackberries into a jar or pan, cover them with boiling water, and allow them to stand in a cool oven all night to draw out the juice; or they may be mashed with the hand. Strain through a sieve into a jar or cask, and let it ferment for fifteen days. Then add one pound of sugar to every gallon of juice, with a quarter of a pint of gin or brandy. The berries should be gathered ripe and on a fine dry day. Probable cost of blackberries, from 8d. to 1s. per gallon.
A hedgerow country wine of the loosest kind: no yeast, no measured gravity, and no instruction on when to bottle. It can be made, but the original leaves out most of what determines whether the result is wine or vinegar.
- "A cool oven" overnightIn a coal range this meant the residual warmth of a dying fire; no temperature is given. A modern equivalent is the lowest oven setting with the door ajar, or simply steeping the fruit in just-boiled water in a covered pan off the heat. The point is only to soften the fruit and release juice, not to cook it.
- Quantities"Any quantity" is the honest answer for a hedgerow wine, but as a working guide 3-4 lb of blackberries and about a gallon of boiling water gives a gallon of must. Anything much thinner produces a pale, watery wine.
- The sugar is lowOne pound per gallon, added after fermentation has been running a fortnight, makes a weak wine: the added sugar alone accounts for something on the order of 5-6 per cent, plus whatever the fruit itself contributed, so closer to a strong cordial than a table wine. Modern country-wine practice uses 2.5-3 lb per gallon, added at the start, and dissolved fully before the yeast goes in.
- Wild fermentationThe recipe relies on yeasts on the fruit skins and in the air. It works often enough, but it also invites acetobacter, which turns wine to vinegar. A packet of wine yeast and a Campden tablet in the must the day before pitching removes most of the guesswork.
- Vessel and air"A jar or cask" left open for fifteen days is the weak point. Ferment in a covered bucket for the first vigorous days, then rack into a demijohn under an airlock. Everything the juice touches should be sterilised; a hedgerow wine spoils from contamination far more often than from bad fruit.
- Gin or brandyA quarter-pint per gallon is a light fortification, added for keeping quality rather than strength. It should go in at bottling, not while the wine is still working.
- After the fifteen daysThe original stops there. Expect to rack the wine off its lees two or three times over several months, until it falls clear, then bottle. Blackberry wine is harsh young and needs at least six months.
- The cost note8d. to 1s. per gallon of berries reflects a period when blackberries were sold by the gallon by hawkers and casual pickers, or gathered free from hedges.
Blackberry wine belongs to the English tradition of country or "cottage" wines -- drinks made from whatever the hedges, orchards and gardens gave up free, in a country where grape wine was an imported luxury taxed accordingly. Cassell's places it among the other fruit and flower wines of the household repertoire, built on much the same lines: fruit, boiling water, sugar, fermentation, and a splash of spirit to help it keep. The instruction to gather the berries ripe and on a dry day is not sentiment; wet fruit brings dilute juice and a heavier load of moulds, and blackberries picked after the first frosts have long been considered spoiled, a belief usually traced to the folk saying that the Devil claims them at Michaelmas. The pricing by the gallon, and in pence, is a reminder that blackberries reached Victorian town kitchens through street sellers and rural children rather than through any shop.