NOW that fruit and sugar are both so cheap, all housewives may add wines to their household stores as easily as they may preserves. The difficulty and expense of making is trifling compared with what the latter used to be. Next to the. fruit, sugar is the most important ingredient. In wine countries the grape, under the influence of climate, contains within itself the chemical properties to produce fermentation, while in England artificial aid is compelled to be used to accomplish it. The four requisites for fermentation are sugar, vegetable extract, malic acid, and water; and upon the proper regulation of these constituents the success depends.

The fermentation requires great attention, and should neither be suffered to continue too long, nor be checked to,o early. Its commencement, which will be about a day after the articles have been mixed, will attract attention by the noise it makes. For a sweet wine, the cask should not be closed until the sound of fermentation has almost ceased. If a dry wine, have ready a barrel which has been subjected to the fumes of sulphur, and draw off your wine into it. Rack off the wine, clearing it with isinglass, and bottle in about ten, weeks after it.

1545. Apple Wine

Add to a barrel of cyder the herb scurlea, the quintessence of wine, a little nitre, and a pound of syrup of honey. Let it work in the cask till clear and well settled, then draw it off and it will be little inferior to Rhenish either in clearness, colour, or flavour.

1546. Apricot Wine

Pare and stone some ripe apricots; bruise and put them to six quarts of water and one of white wine; simmer gently for some time, when the fruit is soft pour the liquid to apricots prepared as theothers. Let it stand twelve hours, stirring it often, pour off the liquid, and press the remains through a fine bag, and put them together in a cask to ferment, put a pound of sugar to each gallon. Boil an ounce of mace and half an ounce of nutmeg in a quart of white wine, and while hot pour it in the fermenting wine, and hang a bunch of fresh burrage in the cask for three days; draw it off and keep in bottles.

1547. Balm Wine

Boil twenty pounds of lump sugar in four gallons and a half of water gently for an hour, and put it in a tub to cool; bruise two pounds of the tops of green balm, and put them into a barrel with a little new yeast, and when the syrup is nearly cold pour it on the balm; stir it well together, and let it stand four and twenty hours, stirring frequently; bring it up, and when it has stood for six weeks bottle it, put a lump of sugar into each bottle; cork tight.

1548. Bakley Wine

Boil half a pound of French barley in three waters; save about a. pint of the last water, and mix it with a quart of white wine, half a pint of borage water, as much clary water, a little red rose water, the juice of five or six lemons, three quarters of a pound of sugar, the rind of a lemon, strain and bottle it up.