Name: Cherry Wine
Ingredients: 4 gallons ripe cherries; 4 gallons boiling water; 3 pounds granulated sugar

Cherry Wine

Ingredients

4 gallons ripe cherries
4 gallons boiling water
3 pounds granulated sugar

Directions

Prepare the must

Place 4 gallons of ripe cherries in a wooden or stone vessel.
Pour 4 gallons of boiling water over the cherries.
Let the mixture stand for 4 to 5 days, mashing and stirring daily.
Strain the mixture.

Add sugar and ferment

Add 3 pounds of granulated sugar for each gallon of juice and allow the sugar to dissolve.
Pour everything into a cask.
Leave the cask loosely covered until fermentation is complete.
Tighten the lid.
The wine will be ready in a year.

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

Ripe cherries: Provide the fruit flavour, colour and sugars that yeast ferments into wine.
Granulated sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and adding 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.