Name: Gooseberry Wine
Ingredients: 10 gallons cold water; 10 gallons unripe large gooseberries; 30 lb white sugar

Gooseberry Wine

Ingredients

10 gallons cold water
10 gallons unripe large gooseberries
30 lb white sugar

Directions

Prepare

Cut the gooseberries in halves and add them to the cold water.
Let the mixture sit for four to five days, stirring frequently.

Ferment and bottle

Strain off the liquid and add the sugar, dissolving it completely.
Strain the mixture into a cask and allow it to ferment for about two months.
Once fermentation has subsided, bottle the wine.

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries: Provide the fruit flavour and acids that give the wine its character.
White sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, and sets the wine's sweetness.
Cold water: Forms the liquid base and draws flavour and colour out of the fruit.

“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.