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Raisin Wine Without Cider

A fermented raisin wine made by macerating raisins in water, pressing, aging, and adding brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Without Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Ferment

  1. Pour the spring water over the raisins and stir well daily for 14 days.

  2. Squeeze the raisins in a horse-hair bag using a press to extract the liquid.

  3. Transfer the liquid to a cask and seal it when it stops hissing.

Age and finish

  1. After 6 months, rack it off into another cask or tub, leaving sediment behind.

  2. Add the gallon of brandy, seal the cask, and bottle it after another 6 months.

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.

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

Malagas raisins
Supply the sugar and fruit flavour that ferment into the wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol level, adding strength and helping preserve the wine.
Spring water
Dissolves the raisin sugars and forms the liquid base for fermentation.

The step that matters

Seal the cask when the hissing stops. Hissing comes from carbon dioxide released during fermentation. Sealing once it slows limits oxygen exposure, which can spoil the wine, while keeping the cask from becoming airtight too early.

“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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