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Drink

Making Wine

A method for producing wine from grapes, involving crushing, pressing, fermentation, and aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,490 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Making Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Crush and press

  1. Sort the grapes and place them in a barrel.

  2. Pound the grapes gently with a pounder, avoiding breaking the seeds.

  3. Place the crushed grapes in a coarse cloth and press them using a cheese or cider press.

  4. Collect the juice, which yields about 10 to 15 quarts per bushel.

Settle and store

  1. Transfer the juice to a clean keg or barrel, filling it a few inches below the bung.

  2. Let the juice sit for one to two weeks until it becomes clear.

  3. Top off the cask with reserved juice, tighten the bung, and store in a cool place until March.

Rack and bottle

  1. In March, rack the wine into jugs or bottles and cork securely.

  2. Wait until the wine is a year old before bottling and seal the bottles hermetically.

  3. If desired, add sugar to the wine, but it's not necessary with ripe grapes.

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. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Provide the juice, which ferments into the wine and supplies its flavor.
Sugar
Optional sweetener that can raise sweetness in the finished wine if the grapes are not ripe.

“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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