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Wine, Currant, White

Bruise forty pounds of fruit in a tub holding fifteen or twenty gallons, and add to it four gallons of water. Stir the whole well, and squeeze till the pulp is thoroughly separated from the skins. Leave these materials at rest for about twelve hours, and then strain them through a canvas bag or fine hair sieve, and pass one gallon of fresh water through the marc. Dissolve twenty-five or thirty pounds of white sugar in the juice thus obtained, and make up the whole quantity by an addition of ten gallons and a half of water. The proportion of sugar here given is for a brisk wine: if a sweet wine is required, there must be forty pounds of sugar. White sugar is recommended as much the best; if moist sugar be used, somewhat more will be necessary. The must being now prepared, the fermentation and subsequent treatment must be exactly the same as for gooseberry wine. If brandy is to be added, it should be done towards the end of the fermentation in the cask. For the above quantity some will put in a quart of brandy alone; others first mix it with honey. Whether the wine should be racked off from the lees at the end of six months, put into a fresh cask for six months longer before it is bottled, or be allowed to remain the whole time in the lees, must depend upon the state of the wine. The bottling should be carefully attended to.