Skip to main content
Drink

Red Currant Wine

A fermented wine made from red currants, sugar, water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Red Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Dissolve the sugar in 4 gallons of water.

  2. Squeeze the currants to extract juice, using a sieve and a coarse cloth.

  3. Combine the juice with the sugar water in a 9-gallon cask.

Ferment

  1. Fill the cask with water daily during fermentation.

  2. Once fermentation stops, seal the cask tightly.

  3. For every quart of juice, add 2 quarts of water and 3.5 lbs of sugar, then pour into a cask.

  4. Cover the bung with paper until fermentation is complete (1-6 weeks).

Finish and bottle

  1. Add 1 pint of brandy for every 5 gallons of wine before bottling in March.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and sets the sweetness and alcohol level of the wine.
Currants
Supply the juice that gives the wine its fruit flavour, acidity and colour.
Brandy
Added before bottling to raise the alcohol content and help preserve the wine.

The step that matters

Seal the cask only after fermentation stops. Sealing while fermentation is still active can trap carbon dioxide and cause pressure buildup, so the cask is kept loosely covered until bubbling ends.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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

Wine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipesElderberry WineElderberry Wine51 recipes