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WINES ♦ |
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Muscadine Wine.— Get the grapes when fully ripe, wash, drain and pound them with a pestle, not breaking the seeds, as they would make the wine bitter. After pounding them, measure and allow to every gallon of the beaten fruit x gallon of soft water; after standing a week, strain and measure the clear juice and add 3 lbs. of loaf sugar to each gallon. After fermentation ceases, bottle it tightly. The drink is grateful and highly refreshing in warm weather.
Cranberry Wine.—Deemed a remedy for scrofula.—After crushing the berries well, put them into a stone jar and allow 2 quarts of berries to 1 quart of water. Stir well and let it stand 2 days; strain through a double flannel bag, then mash a second supply of berries equal in quantity to the first and cover with this liquid. Steep 48 hours longer; strain and allow 1 pound of sugar for 3 quarts of liquor and boil 5 minutes. Set to ferment in lightly covered jars, then pour off and bottle.
French Currant Wine.—Dissolve 8 pounds of honey in 15 gallons of boiling water, to which, when clarified, add the juice of 8 pounds of red or white currants ; then ferment for 24 hours; to every 2 gallons add 2 pounds of sugar and clarify with whites of eggs.
Corinthian or Currant Wine.—Mrs. Weston.—Good for dyspeptics—Gather the seedless grape or Zante currants, lay the bunches one over the other in the sun to dry, then take them to the pressroom and lay them in heaps for some days ; throw on them 1-3 of their bulk of water, then trample with the feet to a pulp or paste, then put them through the press. The juice is thick and dark ; when it settles it becomes clear. Malaga, California and other raisins and elderberries may be used in the same way.
Currant Wine.—Take your currants full ripe, pick and bruise them in a mortar, and to every gallon of pulp put 2 quarts of water first boiled and cold; you can, if you choose, add some grapes; let it stand in a tub to ferment, and then run it through a hair sieve. Let no one touch it, but let it take its time to run, and to every gallon of this liquor put 2 1-2 pounds of white sugar. Stir it well and put it in your vessel, and to every gallon put a quart of the best rectified spirits of wine, and let it stand 6 weeks and bottle and cork tightly.
Honey Wine (Californian.)—Honey, 20 pounds; cider, 12 gallons; ferment, then add 1-2 gallon of rum, the same of brandy, red or white tartar (dissolved) 6 ounces, bitter almonds and cloves of each, 1-4 ounce. This is also called mead wine.
Clairet.—i oz. each of fennel seed, coriander seed, linseed, chill seed, caraway seed, nutmeg plant seeds (garden), nutmeg geranium seeds; bruise them in a clean marble mortar, then for one week let them steep in 2 quarts of proof spirits, strain and add 1 lb. or more of the best loaf sugar. |
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