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Catawba Grape Wine
Mash ripe grapes to a pulp, and let them stand twenty-four hours. Then squeeze through a cloth, and add two pounds of sugar to each gallon of pure juice. Put in a cask, leave the bung out, and put coarse muslin over the hole to admit the air. Let it stand six weeks, or till fermentation ceases. Then close the month of the cask and let the wine stand several months, after which it may be drawn off.--Mrs. R. D.
Catawba Grape Wine.
To every gallon of grape juice add one quart of cold, clear water, and three pounds of "A" sugar. Pour into a runlet and let it remain uncorked fourteen days, and then cork loosely. Add half a box gelatine to every ten gallons, fourteen days after making it. At the end of a month tighten the cork, then let it remain undisturbed for six months, after which it may be carefully racked, bottled, and sealed.--Mrs. Dr. E.
Two versions of the same country wine, both written for a household that owned a cask and expected wild yeast to do the work. The hinge is air: the vessel must be open only while fermentation is vigorous, and sealed tight once it stops, or the wine turns to vinegar.
- "A" sugarA nineteenth-century lettered grade of refined white sugar, a good clean grade of the sort sold by the barrel. Ordinary granulated sugar is the equivalent.
- RunletA rundlet or runlet was a small cask, reckoned in wine measure at about 18 gallons. For a few gallons use glass carboys or food-grade buckets fitted with airlocks.
- Why the water and sugarCatawba is a labrusca-type American grape, high in acid and modest in sugar. In the Catawba receipt the quart of water per gallon dilutes the acid and the three pounds of sugar bring the must up to a fermentable strength; the first receipt adds two pounds and no water. The likely finished strength is a matter of guesswork, since the sugar in the juice itself is unrecorded.
- Wild yeastBoth recipes rely on yeast present on the fruit and in the cask. Modern practice is a packet of dry wine yeast, which ferments predictably and outcompetes wild spoilage yeasts.
- Muslin over the bungThis is the period's airlock: it admits air while keeping out flies. It also admits oxygen, which is why the older method risks vinegar. A water-filled airlock does the same job without the exposure.
- Twenty-four hours on the pulpStanding on the skins draws out colour and tannin. In a warm kitchen this can begin fermenting or souring within a day; keep it cool and covered, and do not extend the time.
- GelatineUsed here as a fining agent to clear the wine by binding tannin and dropping it as sediment. Half a box for ten gallons is a very rough dose; modern finings are sold by weight per gallon. Left long enough, this wine clears on its own.
- Racking and sealing"Drawn off" and "racked" mean siphoned off the lees into a clean vessel. Do this only when fermentation has genuinely finished, or a corked, sealed bottle can build enough pressure to burst.
- YieldAbout five bottles per gallon of finished wine, less the lees left behind at each racking.
Catawba was the grape that first made American wine commercially plausible. A native or chance hybrid of the labrusca type, it is generally traced to the Carolina piedmont and takes its name from the Catawba River; it was propagated and promoted in the 1820s by John Adlum near Washington, and Nicholas Longworth's sparkling Catawba from the Ohio River valley became famous enough by the 1850s that Longfellow wrote a poem in its praise. Its foxy, sharply acid juice explains the sugar and the added water in these recipes: unlike European wine grapes, Catawba needs help to make a balanced drink. That Housekeeping in Old Virginia prints two versions, each credited only to initials, is typical of the book's method - it is a compilation of contributed household receipts, and winemaking sat alongside preserving and pickling as an ordinary autumn use for a heavy crop.