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Wine, Damson
Boil for half an hour ten gallons and a half of filtered river-water with thirty-two pounds of strong moist sugar and the whites of ten eggs well beaten, skimming it well; then add thirty-two quarts of ripe prune damsons well picked from the stalks and stoned, and boil them half an hour longer, skimming and stirring until the liquor is beautifully bright. Strain it off the fruit in a fine hair sieve into your cooler, and when at the proper temperature work it with fresh yeast, spread on toast, three or four days. Then draw it off the sediment, put it into the cask, filter the lees, and fill up, letting it work out at the bung. When it has ceased hissing put to it a quart of French brandy, and stop it up safely, pasting paper over the bung. Let it stand for six months, then rack it off, filter the lees through flannel twice folded, and filling the cask again, add an ounce of isinglass dissolved and mixed with two quarts of the wine. Secure the bung well, and let it remain two years; then draw it off and bottle, sealing the corks. This being a rich wine, requires age, and should not be drunk until it has been bottled two years or more.
A full-scale Victorian country wine, sized for a household cask rather than a demijohn. Everything below is about translating the quantities, the vessels and the fining agents into something a modern winemaker can act on.
- Imperial gallonsA British gallon is 4.55 litres, not 3.79. Ten and a half gallons is about 48 litres. Thirty-two quarts of damsons is roughly 36 litres by volume; the weight is only an estimate, of the order of 50 lb, and the text does not make clear whether the fruit is measured before or after stoning.
- Strong moist sugarThis is unrefined soft brown sugar, damp and dark, of the kind sold loose by grocers. Modern light muscovado is the closest match; plain white sugar will ferment identically but gives a thinner, less molasses-inflected wine.
- Filtered river-waterDo not take this literally. It reflects a period preference for soft water over hard well water. Use filtered tap water, or bottled water if your supply is heavily chlorinated, since chlorine inhibits yeast.
- Egg white and isinglassBoth are finings. The beaten whites coagulate in the boiling syrup and drag out scum; the isinglass, a fish-swim-bladder collagen, is stirred in at the six-month racking and clears the wine over the two years the cask then stands. Bentonite or a proprietary finings sachet does the same work and keeps the wine vegetarian-friendly.
- Yeast spread on toastA float of brewer's barm on a toast raft was the standard way of pitching before packaged yeast. Substitute a rehydrated wine yeast; a general-purpose or Bordeaux strain suits dark stone fruit and will finish the sugar more reliably than barm ever did.
- Working out at the bungThe cask is deliberately left open so foam and yeast can escape, then topped up. The modern equivalent is an open fermenter for the vigorous phase, then a carboy under an airlock. Do not seal a vessel that is still fermenting.
- When it has ceased hissingThis is the hinge of the whole recipe. Stopping the bung while any gas is still being produced builds pressure in a sealed cask or bottle. Confirm with a hydrometer that gravity has been stable for several days, not by ear.
- The brandy and the waitingA quart of brandy in a cask this size lifts the strength only marginally; treat it as a preservative touch rather than a fortification. The timetable -- six months, rack, two years in wood, two or more in bottle -- is not padding: damson wine is tannic and astringent young, and needs the time the text specifies.
Damsons are small, tart, blue-black plums grown in English hedgerows and orchards for centuries, too sharp to eat out of hand and therefore destined for jam, cheese, gin and wine. The "prune damson" named here is one of the older cultivated strains, valued for its deep colour. Home-made country wines of this sort -- from cowslip, elderberry, gooseberry, parsnip, damson -- were a staple of the substantial Victorian household, where a cask in the cellar was both economy and display, and Cassell's carries them alongside the cookery proper. The method reads like small-scale brewing because it is: boiled must, egg-white clarification, barm pitched on toast, isinglass finings and a cask left to work out at the bung are all borrowed straight from the brewhouse. The four-and-a-half-year timetable from fruit to glass says a good deal about a domestic economy that expected to still be in the same house, with the same cellar, when the wine came round.