Name: Gooseberry Wine
Ingredients: 3 lbs gooseberries; 1 pint spring water; 1 lb sugar

Gooseberry Wine

Ingredients

3 lbs gooseberries
1 pint spring water
1 lb sugar

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Bruise the gooseberries in a tub with your hands.
Stir well and let them stand for a whole day.
Strain the mixture and add 1 pint of water and 1 lb of dissolved sugar for every 3 lbs of gooseberries.
Let it stand for 24 hours longer.

Ferment and age

Skim off the scum and transfer the liquid to a vessel.
Place the scum in a flannel bag and add the drained liquid back to the vessel.
Allow it to ferment for 2 to 3 days before sealing it tightly.
Let it stand for 4 months before bottling.

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, acidity and the sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol.
Sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.

“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.