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Wine, Strawberry
Bruise and press out the juice. Pour on the marc seven gallons of water; infuse for twelve hours, and press out the liquor; add this liquor to the juice, and mix them with six gallons of cider. Dissolve in the mixture sixteen pounds of raw sugar and three ounces of powdered red tartar, and then set it to ferment in the usual manner. Pare the rinds of two lemons and two oranges, and, together with the juice, throw them into the fermenting-tub, and take out the rinds when the fermentation is over. Three gallons of brandy may be added.
This is a commercial-scale country wine, written for a household with a fruit press and a cellar full of casks. The quantities need reading carefully before anything is bruised.
- The missing numberNo weight of strawberries is given anywhere in the entry, which makes the recipe unusable as written without a judgment call. Other Victorian fruit wines are sometimes reckoned in bushels of fruit to ten or twelve gallons of finished wine, though the figures vary; here the water and cider alone come to 13 gallons before the strawberry juice is counted, so the fruit charge is presumably large.
- ScaleSeven gallons of water plus six of cider is 13 imperial gallons before the strawberry juice is counted, so the batch lands somewhere around 15 or 16 imperial gallons -- roughly 18 to 19 US gallons, 68 to 73 litres. Divide the whole thing by ten or twenty for a modern batch and keep the proportions.
- MarcThe marc is the pressed pulp, skins and seeds left in the press after the first extraction. Steeping it in water for twelve hours and pressing again recovers colour and flavour that would otherwise be thrown out.
- CiderIn British usage of this period "cider" normally means the fermented drink, though it is sometimes used for fresh-pressed apple juice, and the entry does not say which is intended. If unfermented juice is taken, sweet cider or plain apple juice with no preservatives is the sensible reading; anything containing potassium sorbate or benzoate will stall the ferment.
- Powdered red tartarCrude potassium bitartrate scraped from the inside of red-wine casks, sold as argol. Modern cream of tartar is the refined equivalent; three ounces in 16 gallons is an acid and pH adjustment, not a flavouring.
- "Ferment in the usual manner"The Victorian assumption is a wild ferment driven by yeast on the fruit and in the cellar. Present practice is a measured wine yeast into sanitised vessels, because a spontaneous ferment at this volume can spoil to vinegar or acetaldehyde rather than turn out as wine.
- Sugar and strengthSixteen pounds of raw sugar across roughly 16 gallons, on top of the sugar already in the strawberries and the cider; with no fruit weight given the finished strength cannot be calculated with any confidence, and the added sugar alone accounts for well under 10 per cent. Raw sugar means an unrefined cane sugar; demerara or a light muscovado is close.
- The citrus rindsPared rinds go in with the juice and come out once fermentation ends. Left in longer, the rind oils turn bitter, which is the point of the instruction to remove them.
- The brandyThree gallons into 16 is a heavy fortification, lifting the finished wine to something in the region of 15 per cent and preserving it for cask storage. It is optional and was in effect the keeping agent; a modern batch that is racked, sulphited and bottled does not need it.
- After fermentationThe entry stops at the end of the ferment. Expect to rack off the lees two or three times over several months and to give a strawberry wine at least a year in bottle, since the fresh fruit aroma fades early and the wine tastes thin before it settles.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, fruit wine was preserving rather than viticulture. A glut of soft fruit that could not be eaten or potted was pressed, sugared and fermented, and the result kept in cask through the winter as a cheap sweet drink. The tell here is the red tartar, a by-product swept out of commercial wine casks and sold on to domestic and small trade makers. Strawberries are a poor structural base for wine, low in acid and tannin and prone to losing their scent, which is why recipes of this period lean on citrus rind, added tartar and a heavy dose of brandy. The instruction to ferment "in the usual manner" tells us something about the book's audience: it assumed anyone reading the entry had already made wine, cider or beer at home and needed only the proportions.