Name: Gooseberry Wine
Ingredients: 1 peck gooseberries; 3 pounds fine dry powdered sugar

Gooseberry Wine

Ingredients

1 peck gooseberries
3 pounds fine dry powdered sugar

Directions

Prepare the juice

Gather gooseberries in dry weather when they are half ripe.
Pick and bruise the gooseberries in a tub.
Press the bruised gooseberries using a horse-hair cloth to extract the juice.
For every gallon of juice, add 3 pounds of sugar and stir until dissolved.

Ferment and rest

Transfer the mixture into a vessel or cask, filling it completely.
If using a 10–12 gallon cask, let it stand for 2 weeks.
If using a 20 gallon cask, let it stand for 3 weeks.
Store the mixture in a cool place.
Draw off the lees and pour the clear liquid back into the cask.
If using a 10 gallon cask, let it stand for 3 months.
If using a 20 gallon cask, 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 and the juice that becomes the wine.
Sugar: Feeds fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.

“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.