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Sage Wine, Green

Take nine pounds of good honey, and boil it with ten gallons of river-or rain-water and the whites of ten eggs well beaten. Boil for one hour, skimming till the liquid is clear; while hot, pour it upon forty pounds of good Malaga raisins freed from stalks, stoned and cut small, and three pecks of green sage-leaves freshly gathered and shredded roughly. Cover the preparation closely, and stir now and again during forty-eight hours. At the end of that time press the fruit in a hair bag, strain the liquid into a clean vessel, and on the following day draw off what is clear into a cask. Filter the lees, and add them with the rinds of six lemons and four Seville oranges pared thin, and the juice of both strained. Keep the cask open for four or five days and well filled up; when the liquor has done hissing, wait a day, then add three half-pints of brandy and an ounce and a half of best isinglass dissolved in two quarts of the wine. Secure the bung carefully, and store in a cool dry cellar for twelve months; then, if fine, bottle the wine; if not, rack it off into a clean vessel, filter the dregs two or three times through a flannel bag, and fill the cask again. Add a pint more brandy and four ounces of sugar-candy: then stop the cask up again, and bottle the wine in three months. If kept for half a year this wine will be excellent and highly flavoured.