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Seville Orange Wine
For each gallon of juice add two gallons of water, and three pounds of sugar to each gallon of the resulting liquid. Let this ferment, covering bung-hole with thin cotton cloth only. Fermentation will cease in two months or less, when rack off into another receptacle (preferably a good barrel each time), stop the bung and keep in a cool place.
A country wine recipe of the plainest sort: juice, water, sugar, and time. Everything that makes it work or fail is in the parts the original leaves out.
- The hinge: exclude air, admit gasThe thin cotton cloth over the bung-hole lets carbon dioxide escape while keeping insects out, and it is the only thing standing between wine and vinegar. A water-filled airlock in a drilled bung does the same job far more reliably, and the vessel must be topped up to the neck at every racking so no air sits on the surface.
- GallonsAn English cookbook of this period means the imperial gallon, 4.8 US quarts; an American one means 3.8 litres. The recipe is a set of ratios, so either works provided you keep to one throughout: 1 part juice, 2 parts water, then 3 lb sugar per gallon of the combined liquid.
- Seville orangesThese are bitter oranges, sold in Britain and North America for a few weeks in January and February and otherwise scarce. Reckon very roughly 3 lb of fruit per pint of juice, depending on the fruit; sweet oranges are not a substitute here, since the acid and bitter oils are the whole point.
- Sugar and strengthThree pounds per imperial gallon puts the starting gravity somewhere near 1.110-1.115, a potential alcohol of about 14-15 percent; measured against a US gallon the figure is higher still. Either way that is high for a wild ferment and may well stick partway, leaving a sweet, unstable liquid. Two to two and a half pounds gives a sounder wine.
- YeastNo yeast is named, and the recipe appears to rely on whatever is on the fruit and in the room. A packet of dry wine yeast, and a teaspoon of yeast nutrient to make up for what a sugar-and-water must lacks, removes the guesswork and the risk of a slow start going off.
- Sanitation"A good barrel each time" was practical advice in a house that owned barrels. Glass carboys or food-grade plastic fermenters, rinsed with a no-rinse sanitiser, do the same work without the risk of harbouring spoilage organisms in the wood.
- Two months, then longerFermentation slowing in two months is plausible for a cool cellar. But racking once and stopping the bung is not the end: expect to rack again at four and eight months, and to leave the wine a year before it is drinkable. Bottling before fermentation has genuinely finished will burst bottles.
- YieldEach gallon of juice produces about three gallons of wine: roughly fifteen 750 ml bottles if you have worked in US gallons, nearer eighteen in imperial, less whatever is lost at each racking.
Seville oranges came into northern Europe from Spain and were long treated as a preserving and flavouring fruit rather than an eating one \, too sharp and bitter to peel and eat, but unrivalled for marmalade, which is why the short winter season still matters to cooks. Their brief availability also made them a candidate for wine: a household with more bitter oranges than jars could turn the surplus into something that would keep. Lemon and Seville orange were often treated as similar sources of acidity in cordials and country wines. Fruit wines of this kind were a staple of the English domestic still-room, made from whatever the season produced \, elderberry, cowslip, gooseberry, parsnip \, and the method here, with its water, sugar, cloth over the bung and repeated racking, is much the same one applied to all of them.