Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓
Currant Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Extract the juice
Crush the currants and let them stand for 24 hours to extract juice.
Strain the juice through double cheesecloth; you should have about 3 gallons.
Make the syrup
Cover the pulp with water and cook for 20 minutes, then strain through cheesecloth.
Combine the liquid from the pulp with sugar in a pot and heat until the sugar melts.
Remove from heat and let cool, then mix the melted sugar with the juice.
Ferment and rack
Transfer the mixture to a cask and fill it with soft water, keeping it full to allow sediments to run out.
Add water every 2-3 hours for a week.
After a month, fill the cask daily and then draw off the wine into a clean cask.
Bottle
Bottle the wine if desired.
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.
-
Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,256 recipes
Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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
- Currants
- Provide the juice, flavor and natural acidity that define the wine.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast, which converts it to alcohol, and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
The step that matters
Keeping the cask full. Filling the cask keeps air out of the wine. Less headspace limits oxidation and the growth of spoilage microbes, while sediment settles and drains out at the bottom.
“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.
More currant wine recipes
You might also like
Black Currant Cordial11 recipes
Vegetable Soup350 recipes
Raspberry Vinegar214 recipes
Brown Coffee with Egg175 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.