Skip to main content
Drink

Raisin Wine

A wine made by fermenting Malaga raisins in water, then adding brandy and aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Raisin Wine

Why it works: Raisin and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,768 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raisin Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Ferment the raisins

  1. Combine 1 gallon of water with 8 pounds of Malaga raisins in a large tub.

  2. Stir the mixture thoroughly every day for a month.

  3. After a month, press the raisins in a horse-hair bag to extract as much liquid as possible.

  4. Transfer the liquid into a cask.

  5. Wait for the liquid to stop hissing.

Age and clarify

  1. Add 1 bottle of the best brandy.

  2. Seal the cask and let it sit for twelve months.

  3. Rack off the liquid without the dregs.

  4. Filter the liquid through a bag or flannel.

  5. Add the clear liquid back to the cask.

  6. Pour in 1 to 2 quarts of brandy, depending on the size of the vessel.

  7. Seal the cask and let it age for three years before bottling or drinking.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Malaga raisins
Provide sugar and fruit solids that ferment into the wine's alcohol and flavor.
Water
Dilutes the raisin sugars and forms the liquid base the yeast ferments in.
Brandy
Fortifies the wine with extra alcohol, stabilizing it and preserving it during long aging.

The step that matters

Wait for the liquid to stop hissing. Hissing is carbon dioxide from active fermentation. Adding brandy or sealing the cask while fermentation continues can trap gas and cause pressure buildup, and fortifying too early can halt the yeast before the sugars are converted.

“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 raisin wine recipes

Malaga 6Cake 5Orange 3 See all 122 →

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes