Damson Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Gather the damsons and bruise them with your hands.
Place the bruised fruit in an earthen stein with a faucet, and cover the faucet with straw.
Boil the water and pour it over the fruit while it's scalding hot.
Let the mixture stand for two days.
Ferment and age
Draw off the liquid and transfer it to a clean cask.
Add 2.5 pounds of sugar for every gallon of liquid.
Fill the cask and let it stand for at least a year before bottling.
Bottle
When bottling, add a small lump of loaf sugar to each bottle.
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
- Damsons
- Provide the main fruit flavour, acidity and colour of the wine.
- Sugar
- Feeds the fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
- Water
- Extracts juice and flavour from the bruised fruit and forms the bulk of the liquid.
The step that matters
Fill the cask and let it stand for at least a year before bottling. Wine needs time to ferment and clear. Bottling too early can leave the wine cloudy, harsh, or still fermenting, which can build pressure in sealed bottles.
“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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