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Lemon Wine
Put the thin rind of five lemons into a tub. Pour over them a syrup made by boiling four quarts of water with four pounds of sugar for thirty minutes. When quite cold, add the strained juice of ten lemons. Place a toast covered with yeast on the top, and let the liquid stand for a day or two, until fermentation begins, then take out the rind, put the liquor into a cask, and keep it filled up to the top until it has ceased working, when it must be bunged down closely. In three months it will be ready for bottling. If preferred, the peel of the lemon can be omitted. This wine should be made at the beginning of the year, when lemons are cheapest and best. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for a gallon and a half of wine.
A straightforward English country wine: sugar syrup, lemon juice, and a wild-ish ferment started with barm. The method holds up, but the equipment and the yeast need translating.
- The hinge: do not bung until it is truly finished"Bunged down closely" while any sugar remains will build pressure in a sealed cask or, worse, in bottles. Ferment under an airlock and confirm with a hydrometer that the gravity has been stable for several days before sealing or bottling.
- The toast covered with yeastThis is barm — the live yeast skimmed from a brewing or baking ferment, floated in on toast so it sat on the surface. Substitute a sachet of dried wine yeast (a neutral white-wine strain) pitched into the cooled liquid.
- Yeast nutrientLemon juice and sugar give the yeast almost no nitrogen, and a nineteenth-century barm carried a great deal of nutrient with it. A modern dried yeast in this must will stall or throw off sulphury smells without added yeast nutrient.
- Strength and volumeFour pounds of sugar in a gallon and a half of liquid is a heavy sugar loading, well above 1.075-1.080, and capable of a good deal more than 10 percent alcohol if it ferments dry. The stated yield of an imperial gallon and a half is about 6.8 litres, or nine standard bottles.
- Rind means zest only"Thin rind" is the coloured outer layer, pared thin with no white pith, which turns the wine bitter. The recipe removes it once fermentation begins; prolonged contact with the peel oils is generally held to make the wine harsh.
- VesselsThe tub is an open fermenter; use a food-grade bucket with a loose lid. The cask is the secondary; a glass demijohn with an airlock does the same job and lets you see the sediment. Everything must be sanitised, which the original takes for granted and modern brewing does not.
- Keeping it filled to the topTopping up during and after the active ferment excludes air and prevents the wine going to vinegar. In a demijohn, top up with cooled boiled water or a little sugar syrup to keep the headspace minimal.
- TimingThree months to bottling is realistic, but the wine will be raw and hot at that point. Country wines of this kind improve markedly over six to twelve months in bottle.
- CostTwo shillings and sixpence for a gallon and a half was cheap even then — the point of the recipe. It tells you lemons were a January bargain, not that the wine was fine.
Homemade "wines" from fruit, flowers and roots were a fixture of the British household economy well into the twentieth century, made in the same kitchens that put up jams and pickles, and Cassell's carries a long run of them. None had any relation to grape wine; they were sugar ferments flavoured with whatever was seasonal and cheap, and they gave a modest household something alcoholic without the excise duty on spirits or the expense of imported bottles. The instruction to make it "at the beginning of the year, when lemons are cheapest and best" reflects the Mediterranean citrus harvest reaching British ports through the winter months. The toast smeared with yeast is older still: floating barm on a piece of bread was a common way of pitching a ferment in a kitchen that had no packaged yeast, and the phrase survives in recipe books long after brewers' barm had stopped being readily available to most households.