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Drink

Damson Wine

A fermented beverage made from damson fruit, boiled water, and sugar, aged for up to a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Damson Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Gather damson fruit on a dry day and bruise them.

  2. Put the bruised fruit into a vessel with a cork, and add boiling water.

  3. After two days, draw off the liquid.

Sweeten and age

  1. Transfer the liquid to another vessel.

  2. Add 2.5 pounds of fine sugar for every gallon of liquid. Fill the vessel and seal it tightly.

  3. Keep it in the vessel for twelve months before bottling.

Bottle

  1. When bottling, add a lump of sugar to each bottle.

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

What each ingredient does

Damson fruit
Provides the flavour, colour and fruit sugars that the wine is built from.
Fine sugar
Feeds fermentation and adds sweetness to balance the tartness 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.

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