To Make Pearl Gooseberry Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Bruise the gooseberries with a wooden pestle in a tub.
Let the bruised gooseberries stand overnight.
Press and squeeze the mixture through a fine sieve.
Let the liquor stand for 7-8 hours.
Pour the clear liquor from the sediments.
Make the wine
Add 1 pound of sugar, stirring until melted.
Add 5 pints of water.
Add 2 more pounds of sugar.
Dissolve ½ ounce of isinglass in 1 pint of boiled liquor.
Add the dissolved isinglass to the mixture.
Transfer everything to a cask.
Seal the cask well.
Age and bottle
Let the wine sit for 3 months before bottling.
Place a lump of double-refined sugar in each bottle.
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
What each ingredient does
- Pearl gooseberries
- Provide the fruit, juice and flavour that form the body of the wine.
- Double-refined sugar
- Feeds the fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
- Isinglass
- Fining agent that helps clear the wine by settling out suspended particles.
The step that matters
Pouring off the clear liquor. Sediment left in the liquor can cloud the wine and carry off-flavours into the cask. Pour gently so the settled solids stay behind.
“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.
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