Raisin Wine, Which, If Long Kept, Really Resembles Foreign
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cask
Boil the water to be used for the wine, then let it cool to a perfect cold temperature.
Put into a sound sweet cask eight pounds of fine Malaga raisins for each gallon of water to be used, removing only the large stalks.
Alternately add fruit and water until the cask is full, pressing the raisins well down.
Lay the bung lightly over the cask.
Ferment and store
Stir the wine every day or two.
Keep the cask full by adding boiled water that is always quite cold when used.
When fermentation has entirely ceased (usually after six to seven weeks), press in the bung.
Leave the wine untouched for twelve months.
Draw the wine off into a clean cask.
Fine the wine, if necessary, with isinglass tied in muslin and suspended in it.
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. See the original page.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Malaga raisins
- Supply the sugar and fruit flavour that ferment into the wine's alcohol and character.
- Water (in the method)
- Dissolves the raisin sugars and provides the liquid in which fermentation takes place.
The step that matters
Keep the cask full. Topping up with boiled, cold water keeps air out of the surface, limiting spoilage and acetic souring while fermentation runs.
“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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