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Black Currant Wine, Very Fine

A fermented wine made from black currant juice, water, sugar, and brandy, aged for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and brandy work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Black Currant Wine, Very Fine

Ingredients

Directions

Ferment

  1. Mix black currant juice and water in a cask.

  2. Add sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Place the cask in a warm, dry room to ferment.

  4. Skim off any refuse after fermentation is complete.

  5. Fill up the cask with reserved liquor.

Fortify and age

  1. Once fermentation has ceased, add brandy to the wine.

  2. Seal the cask for nine months.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle the wine and strain through a jelly bag until clear.

  2. Store for 10 to 12 months before consuming.

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. Black currant + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Black currant juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and acidity of the wine.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and feeds the yeast so it ferments into alcohol.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the wine once fermentation stops.

The step that matters

Adding the brandy after fermentation has ceased. Brandy added while fermentation is still active would raise the alcohol level and stop the yeast early, leaving the wine sweeter and less fully fermented. Waiting until fermentation has finished lets the sugar convert first, and the brandy then fortifies and stabilises the finished wine.

Swap the black currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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