Cherry Wine
Measure the berries and bruise them, adding to every gallon one quart boiling water. Let it stand twenty four hours, stirring occasionally. Then strain of the liquor, put in a jar, adding two pounds sugar to every gallon. Stop tightly and let it stand till the next October, when it will be fit for use without straining or boiling
A country fruit wine of the simplest kind: crushed cherries, hot water, sugar, and the better part of a year. A few points need translating before it will work in a modern kitchen, and one of them is a matter of not breaking glass.
- Do not stop it tightlyThe single instruction to ignore. Wild fermentation will still be producing carbon dioxide for weeks, and a firmly sealed jar or crock becomes a pressure vessel. Use a fermentation lock, or cover loosely with cloth for the first ten days and only then fit an airlock; seal properly only once bubbling has fully stopped.
- "Berries" means cherriesThe recipe sits among a run of fruit-wine recipes and the wording looks to have been carried over from them; the usage of the period was loose about what counted as a berry. Sour or morello cherries are the likelier choice for wine, being both acidic and cheap; sweet cherries make a flatter, flabbier wine.
- Bruising and pitsBruise means crush the flesh, not smash the stones. Cracked cherry pits leach bitter almond flavours and are best avoided; pit the fruit or crush gently by hand.
- The measuresA gallon of measured whole cherries is roughly 5-6 lb of fruit. One quart of boiling water per gallon of fruit gives a very thick must, closer to a mash than a liquid, which is why the twenty-four-hour steep and stirring matter.
- SugarTwo pounds per gallon of the strained liquor gives a modest wine, perhaps 8 to 10 percent alcohol depending on the ripeness of the fruit and how much juice ends up in the liquor. A hydrometer reading before fermentation is the only way to know.
- YeastThe recipe relies on wild yeast from the fruit skins and the air of the kitchen, which is why results varied and why some batches went to vinegar. A packet of wine yeast pitched after the water has cooled to blood heat gives a predictable ferment and crowds out spoilage organisms.
- SanitationEverything the must touches should be sanitised. An old crock and its cloth cover can carry a resident population of acetic bacteria.
- "Till the next October"Cherries ripen in Virginia in late May and June, so "the next October" is either the coming autumn, some four months on, or October of the following year, sixteen months on; the recipe does not say which. Racking off the sediment into a clean vessel after the first few months gives a cleaner wine than leaving it undisturbed.
- YieldExpect roughly two-thirds of the starting liquid volume as clear wine after fermentation and racking losses.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housekeepers, devotes a run of pages to domestic wines and cordials made from whatever the orchard and hedgerow gave up in quantity: blackberry, currant, elderberry, grape, cherry. These were not attempts at claret. They were preserving recipes, a way of keeping a June glut in usable form through the year, and they doubled as household medicine, dosed for weakness and stomach complaint. The method here, crushing fruit, scalding it, drawing off the liquor, sugaring, and letting time do the rest, is the same one printed in English household books a century earlier. Sour cherries suited it well: they bore heavily, they bruised too fast to travel far to market, and their acidity gave the finished wine a keeping quality that sweeter fruit lacked.