Raisin Wine
Put 20 pounds of raisins, with the stalks into a hogshead, and fill it almost fall of spring water; let it steep about twelve days, frequently stirring it about, and after pouring the juice off press the risins, put all the liquor together in a clean vessel. You will find it to hiss for some time, and when the noise ceases, stop it close and let it stand for six or seven months; and then, if it proves fine and clear, rack it off into another vessel; stir it up and let it remain twelve or fourteen weeks longer; then bottle it off.
An eighteenth-century country wine made by rehydrating dried grapes and letting wild yeast do the rest. The method is sound in outline, but the vessel size and the raisins themselves both need thinking about before anyone scales it.
- A hogshead is enormousDepending on the trade, a hogshead runs from about 52 imperial gallons upward. Twenty pounds of raisins in that volume is roughly six ounces per gallon, far too little sugar to ferment into anything but faintly sweet water that will spoil rather than ferment. Traditional raisin wine ratios run 2-3 lb per gallon, which suggests either a much smaller cask was meant or a figure has dropped out of the text.
- Modern raisins may not fermentMany supermarket raisins are coated in oil to stop them clumping, and some are treated with sulphur dioxide (usually the golden or pale sorts) or with a preservative such as potassium sorbate. Sorbate in particular is designed to stop yeast working. Unsulphured, untreated dried grapes are what this recipe assumes.
- "Almost full" is deliberateThe headspace is there because vigorous fermentation throws up a foaming cap that will push out of a brim-full vessel. Leave a good margin.
- "Stop it close" is the dangerous lineSealing a cask or carboy while any fermentation continues builds pressure. The original relies on the hissing having genuinely stopped; a modern maker would fit an airlock instead of trusting the ear.
- The stalks are intentionalStems add tannin, of which this wine otherwise has very little, giving the finished drink more structure. They can also lend a green, astringent note if the steep runs long.
- Spring waterChlorinated tap water can give medicinal off-flavours and is best avoided. Filtered or bottled water does the job; note that letting water stand will drive off chlorine but not chloramine.
- TimelineTwelve days on the fruit, six or seven months in bulk, a racking, then three months more. Roughly a year from raisins to bottle, which is normal for a wine relying on ambient yeast and no fining agents.
- RackingSiphon off the clear wine and leave the sediment behind; do not pour, and do not stir up the lees. The "stir it up" that follows most likely refers to the wine once it is in the clean vessel, though the original is ambiguous.
Raisin wine was one of the staples of the English household still-room from the seventeenth century onward, and it appears often in cookery and receipt books. The reason is economic: British grapes rarely ripened enough to ferment well, imported wine carried heavy duty, but dried fruit from Malaga, Smyrna and the Levant arrived cheaply and kept well in the storeroom. A housekeeper could therefore make wine in any month of the year from a commodity already on the shelf. Such wines were often flavoured afterwards with elderflower, cowslip or brandy, and the better ones were said to pass for sherry or sack; raisin wine recipes do turn up in collections alongside instructions for imitating foreign vintages. The vocabulary here, hogshead and racking and the wine "hissing", belongs to domestic brewing rather than professional winemaking, and assumes a household that already owned casks.