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Wine, Cherry, Red

Take some ripe red cherries, press them, breaking the stones amongst the fruit, till you have obtained ten gallons of pure juice. Add twenty-four pounds of strong, bright moist sugar, stir well, and let the liquor stand three days covered up, stirring twice every day. Press the fruit in a horse-hair bag, and add the result to the juice; then mix well, and strain into a sweet cask, adding five pints of French brandy, the rinds of six lemons pared very thin, and an ounce of the best isinglass dissolved in a little water. Secure the bung tightly, and let the wine stand for six months in a cool cellar; then rack it off, filter the lees perfectly fine, and put all into the same cask again with three ounces of sugar-candy broken into large pieces. Fasten the bung as before, keep the wine eighteen months, and then bottle it. This excellent wine deserves keeping till it is very old. A rich white cherry wine may be made as follows. Take all kinds of ripe cherries, and bruise them in a tub till you have extracted eight gallons of juice; add sixteen pounds of good moist sugar, and set the liquor aside (covered closely up) for three days. Put two gallons of soft water upon the fruit, stir well for twenty minutes, and infuse for the same length of time. Then pare the rinds off four Seville oranges and three lemons-pare them very thin-stone and shred four pounds of Smyrna raisins, put them into a sweet ten-gallon cask with the juice of the oranges and lemons strained, and six ounces of sugar-candy. Mix the liquors from the two vessels and strain well; then filter through a flannel bag, and fill the cask; leave the bung out four or five days; add a pint and a half of brandy and an ounce of isinglass dissolved in a little light wine, and stop up the cask safely for eighteen months. Then bottle the wine, seal the corks, and in six or eight months it will be fit for use. This wine will remain good for three years, not longer.