To Make Gooseberry Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Gather half-ripe gooseberries on a dry day and pick them clean.
Bruise the gooseberries in a vessel, keeping the seeds whole.
Place the pulp in a canvas bag and press out all the juice.
Mix 3 pounds of sugar into each gallon of juice until dissolved.
Ferment and bottle
Pour the mixture into a clean cask that can hold it all.
Let it stand for 14 days if you have 8-9 gallons, or 40 days for 20 gallons in a cool place.
After the standing time, draw off the liquid from the lees into another clean vessel.
Allow it to stand for 3 months for 10-12 gallons or 5 months for 20 gallons before bottling.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Gooseberries
- Provide the juice and natural acidity and flavour that form the body of the wine.
- Fine loaf sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and sweetness in the finished wine.
The step that matters
Drawing off the liquid from the lees. Racking the wine off the sediment separates it from the lees, which would otherwise add off-flavours and cloudiness during the long standing period.
“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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