Gooseberry
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Gather gooseberries when half ripe in dry weather.
Pick clean and bruise with a piece of wood, keeping the seeds whole.
Put the pulp into a canvas bag and press out the juice.
To 1 gallon of juice, add 2 pounds of sugar and stir until dissolved.
Pour into a cask that holds the entire mixture.
Ferment and bottle
Let it stand for 14 days if 9 gallons, or 40 days if 20 gallons, keeping it cool.
After the standing time, draw off from the lees into another clean vessel.
Let it stand for 3 months if 10-12 gallons, or 5 months if 20 gallons, then 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
- Gooseberries
- Provide the juice, acidity and fruit flavour that define the wine.
- Fine loaf sugar
- Feeds the fermentation and provides the sweetness that balances the fruit's tartness.
The step that matters
Draw off from the lees. Moving the wine off the settled lees into a clean vessel leaves sediment behind. Leaving it in contact with the lees can introduce off-flavours as the deposit breaks down.
“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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