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Drink

Black Currant Wine

A fermented beverage made from black currant juice, water, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Black Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and ferment

  1. Mix the black currant juice and water in a cask.

  2. Add 4 pounds of moist sugar to the mixture.

  3. Place the cask in a warm, dry room to allow fermentation.

  4. Skim off any refuse during fermentation.

  5. Once fermentation ceases, fill up with reserved liquor.

Fortify and age

  1. After fermentation is complete, add 1 bottle of brandy for every 5 gallons of wine.

  2. Seal the cask tightly and let it age for one year.

Bottle

  1. After a year, bottle the wine and filter out any sediment.

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. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Black currant + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Black currant + winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Black currant juice
Provides the main fruit flavor, color and the sugar and acid that feed fermentation.
Moist sugar
Feeds the yeast so it produces alcohol, and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and stabilizes the wine, halting further fermentation.

The step that matters

Seal the cask tightly and let it age for one year. Sealing limits contact with air, which would let acetic bacteria turn the alcohol into vinegar. Time in the sealed cask lets flavors mellow and sediment settle before bottling.

Swap the black currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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