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ORANGE WINE (an easy way of making)
In making orange wine it may be calculated that ten Seville oranges and three pounds of loaf sugar are required for every gallon of wine. If, therefore, it is wished to make nine gallons of wine, put the strained juice of ninety Seville oranges and twenty-seven pounds of loaf sugar into a cask which is perfectly sweet and dry. Put the pulp from which the juice has been squeezed into a large pan, and pour over it a gallon and a half of water; let it stand for twenty-four hours, then strain it into the cask. If the flavour of the orange-rind is desired, though the wine will be more generally agreeable without it, peel half the oranges, and put the thin rinds into another pan; then pour over them half the quantity of water which was on the pulp, and let them also infuse twenty-four hours, when strain the liquid into the cask. Pour a gallon and a half of water again over the pulp and rinds, let this stand for a day, then add it to the rest; and repeat this performance until the cask is quite full, which will be in about a week. Stir the contents daily. Three days after the cask is full, bung it up closely, and bottle the wine in nine months. It may be used after it has been bottled three months. Time, ten days to make the wine. Probable cost, 2s. 2d. per gallon. Sufficient for a nine-gallon cask.
A classic English country wine, scaled to a nine-gallon cask. The method is sound but assumes knowledge every Victorian housekeeper had and most modern cooks do not — chiefly that fermentation happens by itself and that a sealed vessel full of working must is a pressure vessel.
- Bunging is the hingeThe instruction to bung the cask closely three days after filling assumes the vigorous ferment has largely subsided by then. Seal a still-working must and the cask will vent violently or split. Modern practice is a fermentation lock, left in place until bubbling has stopped for several days and the gravity is stable.
- No yeast is namedThe recipe relies on wild yeast from the fruit and the cask, which is why fermentation is expected to start on its own during the week of topping up. A measured sachet of wine yeast gives a predictable, faster and cleaner ferment; without it, spoilage organisms compete.
- Imperial gallonsThis is a British book, so a gallon is 4.55 litres, not the 3.79-litre US gallon. Nine gallons is about 41 litres — roughly 55 standard bottles. Scale the whole thing down by nine for a single-gallon batch: 10 Seville oranges, 3 lb sugar.
- Loaf sugarRefined white cane sugar sold in hard cones and broken up with nippers. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent. Three pounds per gallon puts the potential alcohol somewhere near 14 per cent, which is high; the ferment may stall short of dry and leave the wine sweet.
- Seville orangesThe bitter marmalade orange, in British shops only from late December to February. They are sharply acidic, which is why they suit wine — sweet oranges give a flabby, low-acid must. Buy them in season and freeze the juice if necessary.
- "Perfectly sweet and dry"Nineteenth-century shorthand for a cask with no off smell. There is no substitute for real sanitising: sterilise every vessel, siphon and bottle with sodium metabisulphite solution or a proprietary steriliser.
- Rind is optional for a reasonThe bitter oils in Seville peel carry through the ferment and can dominate the finished wine. Using only half the oranges' thin rinds, and none of the white pith, keeps it in check.
- Timing and yieldTen days of building the cask, nine months in bulk, three months in bottle before drinking — a year from squeezing to glass. A nine-gallon cask yields about 55 bottles; the stated 2s 2d a gallon was cheap wine.
Orange wine of this kind belongs to the long English tradition of "country wines" — fermented drinks made at home from fruit, flowers, roots and grain because imported grape wine was taxed and expensive. Seville oranges arrived in British ports in midwinter for marmalade-making, and the same short season produced orange wine, orange brandy and orange shrub. The recipe is explicit about the economics: at just over two shillings a gallon, this was a household beverage, made in a cask rather than a demijohn. The reliance on wild fermentation is not carelessness but the norm before packaged yeast; the week of daily stirring and repeated topping-up with fresh water over the pulp was how the maker coaxed and fed a ferment that had begun by itself. Note too the recipe's own remark that the wine is "more generally agreeable" without the rind.<br><br>The name has nothing to do with the modern trade term "orange wine", which describes white grapes fermented on their skins; that usage is recent and unrelated.