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White and Red Argol
Spirit of Green Walnut Shells.
Take any quantity of green walnut shells, mash, or cut them up (see "Recipe No. 19"), and cover them well with alcohol 95°, digest 10 days, then filter. This is a fine astringent flavor.
Spirit of Hickory Nuts.
An infusion of hickory nuts makes a good flavor for brandy. Break the shell of the nut, and at the same time mash the kernal slightly, then take 1/2 bushel of nuts thus prepared, and cover them with alcohol 95°, infuse 10 days, and filter. Use a quart of this flavor to 20 gals. brandy; but as a general rule the manufacturer must be his own judge about this and other flavors. We suppose we are addressing intelligent men capable of forming new combinations with the aid of our book. (See page 117.) Spirit of Almond Shells.
This is a good astringent boquet, and should be prepared the same way as Spirit of green Walnut Shells. White and Red Argol.
During the fermentation of wines, especially those that are tart, a peculiar matter is deposited in the casks, forming a crystalline crust, called crude tartar, wine-stone, or argol. That deposited from red wines is of a reddish color, and is called red argol; while that derived from white wines is of a dirty white color, and denominated white argol. Argol has a sharp acid taste, and gives a fine vinous body and flavor to brandy, it is soluble in warm water but not in alcohol.
To prepare argol for flavoring brandy, dissolve 1 part argol in 8 parts warm water, and use 1/4 lb. to 40 gals. brandy. (See "Recipe No. 5.")
Four flavor concentrates from a rectifier's manual: three nut infusions and one solution of crude wine tartar, all intended to be dosed into neutral spirit to imitate aged brandy. The quantities are trade-scale and need dividing hard.
- "Alcohol 95°" means 190 proof"Alcohol 95°" almost certainly means 95 per cent spirit — 190 US proof — rather than 95 proof; the book does not define the notation, but near-absolute neutral spirit is what a rectifier of this period would have bought. It is a solvent here, never something to taste undiluted; the infusion is a concentrate for blending.
- Green walnut shells are the huskNot the woody nutshell but the soft green hull around an immature walnut, picked early summer while a knife still passes through the whole nut. It stains skin, wood and clothing permanently — wear gloves and work over something you do not care about.
- A bushel is not a usable figureA bushel is about 35 litres dry volume, and the recipe never says how much alcohol "cover them" amounts to. Work by ratio instead: nuts loosely packed in a jar, spirit poured to an inch above them.
- Almond shells, not almond kernelsThe astringency comes from the hull and shell. Bitter almond kernels are a different matter entirely and are the source of the prussic acid that appears elsewhere in books of this kind; keep them out of this.
- Argol is crude cream of tartarPotassium bitartrate deposited as wine-stone in the cask. Refined cream of tartar from the baking aisle is the same compound, purer and paler; winemaking suppliers still sell it. Red argol carries some grape pigment and tannin along with it, which is what the author is after.
- The argol dose is very smallA quarter pound in 40 US gallons is roughly 0.75 g per litre — about a level quarter teaspoon of cream of tartar per litre of spirit. Its job is acidity and "vinous body," not flavor, and overdosing gives a flat metallic sourness.
- Scaling the nut flavorA quart to 20 gallons is 1 part in 80, about 12 ml per litre. Start at half that and taste; the author's own advice — that the maker must be his own judge — is the operative instruction.
- Digestion and filteringTen days is what the recipe gives; "digest" in manuals of this date can imply gentle warmth as well as plain steeping, and a sealed jar shaken daily will do. Filter through paper rather than cloth, since the walnut and hickory infusions throw fine sediment that will keep dropping in the finished bottle.
- LegalityCompounding and flavoring spirits for sale is licensed activity almost everywhere. Flavoring purchased spirit for your own use is a separate question from making it, and worth checking locally before scaling anything up.
Argol was one of the great by-product industries of the nineteenth-century wine trade: the crust scraped from cask staves was shipped in barrels from Italy, Spain and southern France to be purified into cream of tartar and tartaric acid for baking powders, dyeing and medicine. This book puts it to a narrower use. Manuals like The French Wine and Liquor Manufacturer were written for the rectifier — a tradesman who bought cheap neutral spirit and built it up into something that could pass for cognac or rye, using tannin for the grip of oak, argol for the acidity of grape, and nut hulls for the astringent bite of age. The trade was enormous in the decades before and after the American Civil War, when heavy excise duties made genuine aged brandy scarce and expensive. The author's aside that he supposes he is addressing intelligent men capable of forming new combinations is the honest heart of the book: these are not recipes so much as a palette, and the flattery is also a disclaimer.