Skip to main content
Drink

Domestic Grape Wine

A simple homemade grape wine made by fermenting grapes, adding water, sugar, and allowing it to mature.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Grape and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,490 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Domestic Grape Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grapes

  1. Stem the grapes.

  2. Wash them thoroughly.

  3. Mash them.

  4. Add a very little water.

  5. Let the mixture stand for 5 to 7 days to ferment.

Make the juice

  1. Drain and strain the mixture.

  2. Put it into stone jars or crocks to settle.

  3. Drain off the settled juice.

  4. Add 1 pound of sugar for each gallon of juice.

  5. Fill the jars with the sweetened juice.

  6. Let it stand for 2 weeks without covering.

  7. Skim off the froth.

  8. Refill the jars with juice or sweetened water.

  9. Drain off the liquid.

  10. Sweeten to taste.

Bottle

  1. Bottle.

  2. Cork without sealing.

  3. Rack off the wine.

  4. Bottle it.

  5. Seal.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Provide the juice and sugars that ferment into wine.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and feeds the fermentation that produces alcohol.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand without covering. Fermentation gives off gas and invites airborne microbes, so the jars need air flow and skimming of the froth to keep the wine clean while it works.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Grape FrappeGrape Frappe10 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes