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Another, very fine
To every 3 qts. of juice add as much of cold water, and to every 3 qts. of the mixture add 3 lbs. of good, pure sugar. Put it into a cask, reserving some to fill up. Set the cask in a warm, dry room, and it will ferment of itself. When this is over skim off the refuse, and fill up with what you have reserved for this purpose. When it has done working, add 3 qts. of | them into a stone jar, and set them in an oven, or brandy to 40 qts. of the wine. Bung it up close for 10 months, then bottle it. The thick part may be separated by straining, and the percolating liquor be bottled also. Keep it for 12 months.
Strawberry Wine.
Take of cold soft water, 7 galls.; cider, 6 galls.; strawberries, 6 galls. Ferment. Mix, raw sugar, 16 lbs.: red tartar, in fine powder, 3 oz.; the peel and juice of 2 lemons; then add brandy, 2 or 3 qts. This will make 18 galls.
Two country-wine formulas run together here, and the first has been mangled by the printer — a line from an unrelated receipt ("them into a stone jar, and set them in an oven") has dropped into the middle of the sentence about brandy. Read past it: the method is the standard 19th-century pattern of diluted fruit juice, sugar, spontaneous fermentation in cask, then fortification and long aging.
- The missing fruitThe first receipt never names its juice; the title "Another, very fine" shows it followed an earlier wine receipt whose fruit it simply carries over, and it says only "to every 3 qts. of juice." Currant, gooseberry or elderberry juice all fit the sugar and water proportions.
- Gallons and quartsMackenzie's gallon is most likely the old wine gallon of 3.79 L, the same as the modern US gallon; an imperial gallon (4.55 L) would scale everything up by a fifth. The quarts are a quarter of whichever gallon you choose, so keep one system throughout.
- The sugar is very highThree pounds of sugar to three quarts of liquid is roughly 1 lb per quart — around 480 g per litre if the quart is the old wine quart, nearer 400 g per litre on the imperial. No wine yeast will ferment that out dry; expect a sweet, heavy wine.
- "It will ferment of itself"Spontaneous fermentation relied on yeast on the fruit skins and in the cask. It is unpredictable — acetic and lactic spoilage organisms compete — and modern practice is to pitch a cultured wine yeast and use a nutrient, which is the single change that decides whether this comes out as wine or vinegar.
- Do not bung it up early"Bung it up close" applies only after fermentation has genuinely finished. Sealing a cask or bottling while sugar is still fermenting builds carbon dioxide pressure that will blow the bung or burst the glass. Use an airlock until the gravity is stable over a fortnight.
- Red tartarArgol, the crude potassium bitartrate crust scraped from wine casks. Its modern equivalent is cream of tartar, added here to bring acidity up in low-acid strawberry must; a measured acid blend does the job more reliably.
- The brandyThree quarts to forty is about 7.5 percent of the volume, adding roughly 3 percent alcohol to the finished wine — enough to help preservation, not enough to make a true fortified wine. Use a plain unflavoured brandy.
- Yield and timingThe strawberry formula states its own yield of 18 gallons, a cask-sized batch; divide by ten for a manageable 7 L. The first receipt's ten months in bulk plus twelve months in bottle put it close to two years before it is drinkable; the strawberry receipt sets no ageing period.
Fruit or "country" wines like these were a fixture of English and American household books from the 17th century through the 19th, and Mackenzie's collection reprints them in bulk alongside receipts for cider, mead and imitation port. They existed because grapes were expensive or unavailable while currants, gooseberries and strawberries were a garden surplus that had to be used; sugar, cheap after the West Indian trade expanded, supplied the alcohol the fruit could not. The additions here show the period's practical understanding of what fruit musts lack: the sugar that grapes provide naturally, brandy for the keeping power that a low-alcohol berry wine has not got. The strawberry version's use of six gallons of cider as part of the liquid is a frankly economical touch: already-fermented cider brought its own acidity and alcohol to a fruit that gives very little of either.