Home › The Principles of Cookery › Wine, Birch

Wine, Birch

A wine used to be made from the sap of the birch tree, though now it is scarcely known. The sap contains so much saccharine matter as to be fermented; it is to be obtained in the month of March, when it begins to ascend, by boring a hole in each tree, about a foot from the ground, large enough to admit a faucet, which is to be inserted. The sap will flow for several days into a vessel placed to receive it, without injury to the tree. Having obtained as much as is necessary, the hole should be stopped with a peg. To a gallon of this sap add a quart of honey or two pounds and a half of sugar, and boil them together, stirring the whole; add also two ounces of hops for every nine gallons, a few cloves, and a rind or two of lemons. Ferment this with yeast, transfer it to the cask, refine with isinglass, and proceed as in making other British wines. In about two months the wine may be bottled, and in two months more it will be fit for use. It will improve by keeping.