Gooseberry Avine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Gather gooseberries in dry weather when they are half ripe and pick them.
Bruise the gooseberries in a tub with a wooden mallet.
Press the bruised gooseberries through a horse-hair cloth without breaking the seeds.
Ferment
For every gallon of juice, add 3 pounds of powdered sugar and stir until dissolved.
Transfer the mixture to a cask, filling it completely.
Let it stand for 2 weeks if using a 10 or 12-gallon cask, or 5 weeks for a 20-gallon cask.
Store in a cool place, then draw off the liquid from the lees.
Clear and bottle
Clear the vessel of the lees and pour the clear liquid back in.
If using a 10-gallon cask, let it stand for 3 months; for a 20-gallon cask, 4 months.
Finally, bottle the liquid.
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
- Gooseberries
- Provide the juice, tartness and fruit flavour that the wine is built on.
- Powdered sugar
- Adds sweetness and feeds the fermentation that turns the juice into alcohol.
The step that matters
Drawing off the liquid from the lees. The lees are sediment left by fermentation. Leaving the liquid in contact with them can add off-flavours and cloudiness, so it is separated and the vessel cleared before the wine is left to mature.
“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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