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Drink

Sage Wine

A fermented beverage made from spring water, raisins, sage, yeast, and later fortified with mountain wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sage work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 26 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Sage Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the spring water for 15 minutes.

  2. Let the water cool.

  3. Add the cleaned and chopped raisins and red sage to the water.

Ferment

  1. Stir in the ale yeast.

  2. Cover the mixture and let it sit in a warm place for 6-7 days.

  3. Stir once daily.

  4. Strain the liquid into a clean cask.

Age and bottle

  1. After 3-4 days, seal the cask.

  2. Let the sealed cask sit for another week.

  3. Add 2 quarts of mountain wine.

  4. Add ⅓ cup of finings.

  5. Bottle the wine.

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. Raisin + sagetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Supply sugars that the yeast ferments into alcohol, and add body and fruity flavour.
Ale yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Red sage
Adds aromatic herbal flavour to the wine.
Finings (in the method)
Binds suspended particles so they settle out, clarifying the wine.

The step that matters

Let the water cool.. Yeast is killed by heat, so adding it to water that is still hot would stop fermentation before it starts. Cooling the boiled water to a warm temperature keeps the yeast alive to convert the raisin sugars into alcohol.

“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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