Preliminary Hints And Observations

Great care and precaution are necessary in the making wine, as it is frequently spoiled by mismanagement. If you let your wine stand too long before you get it cold, and do not take great care to put your barm upon it in time, it will make it fret in the cask, and you will find it very difficult, if at all possible, to bring it to any degree of fineness. On the other hand, if you let your wine work too long in the tub, it will take off all the sweetness and flavour of the fruit or flowers your wine is made from. Be careful to have your vessels dry, and rinsed with brandy; and as soon as the wine is done fermenting, to close them up properly.

Blackberry Wine

Having procured berries that are full ripe, put them into a large vessel of wood or stone, with a cock in it, and pour upon them as much boiling water as will cover them. As soon as the heat will permit the hand to be put into the vessel, bruise them well till all the berries are broken. Then let them stand covered till the berries begin to rise towards the top, which they usually do in three or four days. Draw off the clear into another vessel, and add to every ten quarts of this liquor one pound of sugar. Stir it well in, and let it stand to work a week or ten days, in another vessel like the first. Then draw it off at the cock through a jelly-bag into a large vessel. Take four ounces of isinglass, and lay it to steep twelve hours in a pint of white wine. The next morning boil it up on a slow fire till it is all dissolved. Then take a gallon of blackberry juice, put in the dissolved isinglass, give them a boil together, and pour all into the vessel. Let it stand a few days to purge and settle, then draw it off, and keep it in a cool place.

Gooseberry Wine

Gooseberries for this purpose must be gathered in dry weather, and when they are only half ripe. Pick and bruise a peck of them in a tub ; then take a horse-hair cloth, and press them as much as possible without breaking the seeds. Having pressed out all the juice, to every gallon of gooseberries put three pounds of fine dry powdered sugar. Stir all together till the sugar is dissolved, and then put it into a vessel or cask, which must be quite filled. If it be ten or twelve gallons, let it stand a fortnight; but if a twenty gallon cask, it must stand three weeks. Set it in a cool place, then draw it off from the lees, and pour in the clear liquor again. If a ten gallon cask, let it stand three months; if a twenty gallon cask, four months, and then bottle it off.

Pearl Gooseberry Wine

Take the best pearl gooseberries, bruise them, and let them stand all night; the next morning press or squeeze them out, and let the liquor stand to settle seven or eight hours: then pour off the clear from the settling, and measure it as it is put into the vessel, adding to every three pints of liquor a pound of double-refined sugar. Break the sugar in small lumps, and put it into the vessel, with a piece of isinglass. Stir it up, and at three months end bottle it, putting a lump of double-refined sugar into every bottle.