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Raspberry Wine
Pick some ripe raspberries, and bruise them well with the back of a wooden spoon. Let them stand for twenty-four hours, and strain the juice through a flannel bag. Boil the juice, and with every gallon put a pound and a half of loaf sugar. When the sugar is dissolved, let the liquor cool a little, and stir briskly into it the whites of three or four eggs. Let all boil gently for a quarter of an hour, and carefully remove the froth as it rises. Let it stand till cool, pour it very gently into a cask, so as not to disturb the settlings, and add as much yeast as will ferment it. When the fermentation begins to decline, tie some flavouring ingredients in a muslin bag, suspend this in the cask for a short time, and taste the liquor frequently, so that the bag may be removed as soon as the wine is pleasantly flavoured. The flavouring articles may either be bruised mace, ginger, almonds, orris-root, or odoriferous flowers, such as cowslip or mignonette. When fermentation ceases, put a pint of white wine with each gallon of liquor, close the cask, and in three months it will be ready for use.
A Victorian country wine, written for someone who already keeps a cask and knows what fermentation looks like. The instructions assume knowledge that has to be supplied before this will work in a modern kitchen.
- No fruit quantity is givenThe recipe scales off juice, not berries. A gallon of strained juice takes a very large quantity of raspberries, and how large depends entirely on how thoroughly they are bruised and how long they are left to drain.
- Gallons are imperialAn imperial gallon is 4.55 litres, not the 3.79 litres of a US gallon. The 1.5 lb of sugar per imperial gallon is added to the sugar already in the juice, so this is a table wine in strength rather than a heavy sweet one.
- Loaf sugarLoaf or lump sugar was simply refined white cane sugar sold in a cone and broken up. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent.
- The egg-white stepThis is fining, the same trick used to clear consomme. The whites coagulate in the hot juice and carry suspended fruit solids to the surface as froth, which is skimmed. Stir them in only once the liquid has cooled below a hard boil or they set in lumps before they can gather anything.
- "As much yeast as will ferment it"This meant a spoonful of barm, the working yeast off a brew or a bread sponge. A sachet of wine yeast per 5 gallons is the modern quantity, pitched only when the liquor is below 25C/77F. Everything the cooled juice touches from that point on should be sanitised, since a cooked, sugared fruit juice is an excellent medium for spoilage organisms as well as yeast.
- Do not close the cask earlyThe instruction to close the cask assumes fermentation has genuinely ceased. Sealing a vessel that is still working builds real pressure. Use an airlock throughout and confirm with a hydrometer that the gravity has been stable for several days before sealing.
- FlavouringsMace, ginger and almonds are straightforward. Orris root is chiefly a perfumery material, though it has long been used as a flavouring too; it is a common skin and respiratory irritant and is easily left out. If you use flowers, use only ones you are certain are edible and unsprayed, and note that wild cowslips are far scarcer than they were and uprooting any wild plant without the landowner's permission is illegal in the UK.
- The pint of white wineAdded per gallon at the end, this lifts the alcohol slightly and helps preserve the finished wine. Brandy appears in the same role in other country-wine recipes; a neutral dry white does the same job less emphatically.
- Three months is a minimumThe wine will be drinkable at three months and considerably better at a year. Bottle only when it is clear and finished, or you will have unintentional sparkling raspberry wine.
Fruit and flower wines were a fixture of the British country household well into the twentieth century, made in the same season and often the same room as the jams and cordials. The technique here is domestic rather than vinous: the juice is boiled and cleared with egg white exactly as a cook would clear a jelly or a soup, which is why a general cookery dictionary could carry it without apology. Raspberries were a favourite base because they give colour and a strong aroma that survives fermentation, and the finishing bag of mace, ginger or flowers reflects an older English taste for spiced and scented drinks, hippocras and cowslip wine among them. The instruction to taste frequently and pull the bag out the moment it is pleasant is the most practical sentence in the recipe.