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Raisin Wine
To each thirty pounds of chopped raisins, stemmed, dried, and well looked over, allow three gallons hot water, steeping in this a day and night. Strain and press without bruising seeds; add an ounce of crude tartar; place in barrel and set in a warm spot. Add two gallons additional of hot water in which has been dissolved three pounds of white sugar. Let ferment; cover with a blanket; place bung in tight and let stand three months, when rack off into a clean barrel and close tight. Fit to bottle in a year.
A straightforward country wine built on dried grapes rather than fresh ones, written for a cooper's barrel and wild yeast. Nothing in it is unsafe, but almost every vessel and assumption has changed.
- Scale firstThirty pounds of raisins and five gallons of water total (three at the start, two with the sugar), which will give something under five gallons of wine once the fruit has taken up its share. For a one-gallon trial, divide everything by six: 5 lb raisins, 4 pints water at the start and about 2.5 pints with the sugar, about 8 oz sugar, and a pinch of tartar.
- Crude tartarThis is argol, the crude potassium bitartrate scraped from wine casks. Cream of tartar is the refined equivalent and does the same job here: it drops the pH so fermentation starts cleanly and the wine does not turn flat and flabby.
- "Without bruising seeds"Nineteenth-century raisins were seeded, and crushed grape seeds release bitter tannin and off flavours. With modern seedless Thompson or Muscat raisins the warning is moot, but still press gently rather than grinding.
- The yeast the recipe does not mentionThis relies on wild yeast from the fruit and the air. Commercial raisins are washed and usually oiled, and some are sulfured, so fermentation may start slowly or not at all. Pitch a packet of dry wine yeast once the must has cooled to lukewarm.
- Do not bung it tight while it is workingThis is the hinge. "Let ferment... place bung in tight" assumed a wooden barrel that could weep gas; a sealed glass carboy or modern lid will build enough pressure to blow. Ferment under an airlock or loose cover until bubbling stops entirely, then seal.
- VesselUse a food-grade plastic fermenting bucket for the first week and glass or stainless for the long aging. A barrel that has stood dry is a reservoir for acetobacter, which turns wine to vinegar.
- Warmth and the blanketThe blanket is insulation, not a lid. Aim for a steady 65-72F; a hot spot near a stove will push the yeast into producing fusel and solvent notes.
- Racking and timingThree months on the lees is longer than modern practice; rack off the sediment at about four to six weeks, then again as it clears. The instruction to bottle at a year is sound advice for a heavy raisin wine, which is harsh and yeasty when young.
Raisin wine was the standby of households that wanted wine but had no vineyard: dried grapes travelled and kept, so a barrel could be started in January in New England or the Midlands as easily as at harvest in Malaga. Recipes like this one appear steadily in nineteenth-century American and British domestic manuals. The call for "crude tartar" is a reminder that home winemakers once bought their acid as argol, the reddish crust that settled inside commercial wine casks and was sold as a by-product; refined cream of tartar for the baking cupboard came from the same source. The long, patient schedule - three months, then a year - reflects a domestic practice that judged by time rather than by measurement.