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Blackberry Wine

A fermented blackberry wine made by boiling berries, adding sugar, fermenting, clarifying with isinglass, and storing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,586 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Blackberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Place ripe blackberries in a large wooden or stone vessel with a spigot.

  2. Pour boiling water over the berries until covered.

  3. Once cool enough, bruise the berries with your hand until broken.

  4. Cover and let sit for 3-4 days until berries rise to the top.

  5. Draw off the clear liquid into another vessel.

  6. Add 1 pound of sugar for every 10 quarts of liquid and stir well.

  7. Let it ferment for 1-10 days in a similar vessel.

  8. Strain through a jelly bag into a large vessel.

Clarify and finish

  1. Soak 4 ounces of isinglass in 1 pint of white wine for 12 hours.

  2. Boil the isinglass until dissolved, then mix with 1 gallon of blackberry juice.

  3. Combine and let sit for a few days to settle.

  4. Draw off and store in a cool place.

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. Sugar + white winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 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

Ripe blackberries
Provide the fruit flavour, colour and the juice for the wine.
Sugar
Sweetness and food for the yeast, which turns it into alcohol during fermentation.
Isinglass
Fining agent that gathers suspended particles so the wine settles clear.
White wine
Carries the isinglass so it can be dispersed evenly through the juice.

The step that matters

Draw off the clear liquid before adding sugar. Leaving the pulp behind keeps unwanted solids out of the fermenting liquid, which otherwise can sour or cloud the wine. Clear juice ferments more cleanly and settles better later.

“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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