Name: Gooseberry Champagne
Ingredients: 1.5 bushels green gooseberries; 12 gallons river water; 1.5 gallons additional water; 42 pounds loaf sugar

Gooseberry Champagne

Ingredients

1.5 bushels green gooseberries
12 gallons river water
1.5 gallons additional water
42 pounds loaf sugar

Directions

Prepare the juice

Crush the gooseberries and place them in a tub with 12 gallons of river water.
Soak for 3 days.
Draw off the liquid and press the fruit to extract as much moisture as possible.
Add 1.5 gallons of water to the remaining fruit, stir well, and press again.
Combine this liquid with the first portion.

Ferment and bottle

Dissolve 42 pounds of loaf sugar in the liquid.
Fill a cask with the mixture, leaving the bung out during fermentation, then secure it.
Bottle the wine in the following spring, covering the corks with wire and green wax.

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

What each ingredient does

Green gooseberries: Provide the fruit flavour, acidity and the juice that ferments into the wine.
Loaf sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, and adds sweetness.

“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.