Presuming this work may be rendered more desirable to farmers, from the introduction of some receipts for making domestic wine from the common hedge grapes, or such as are common on fence rows and on high rich grounds, and which are pleasantly flavored after receiving frost, and also for making cider in the best mode for preservation. I have extracted a few from various author's.
Receipt for making Domestic Wine from the Autumn Blue Grape.
About the latter end of September or about the first white frosts, gather the grapes which with us grow along old fences and hedges—pick all the grapes from the stems that are juicy, allowing two bushels thus picked a little heaped, to the barrel. Mash them well between your hands in small parcels, either in earthen pans, or some convenient small vessels—put them when mashed into a tub together, and add a little water so as to soak the pumice.... After stirring them well together, squeeze the pumice out from the liquor with your hands, as clean as you can—then strain the juice through a hair sieve. If the juice seems not all extracted from the pumice at one soaking and squeezing, put water to the pumice and squeeze them over again; take care not to add too much water, lest there should be more than the cask will hold. If after all the ingredients are added, the cask is not full, it may then be filled up with water. To the liquor thus prepared, add two pounds of good, clean, rich low priced brown sugar, per gallon, stirring it in the tub till all the sugar be dissolved; let it remain in the tub, and in a day or two it will ferment, and the scum rise to the top, which must be carefully skimmed off—then put the wine into a clean nice barrel—do not bung it up tight. There is generally a fermentation in it the spring following, when the grape vines are in blossom, but racking it off just before that season will prevent its working too much. If it is wanted to be soon ripe for use, put a quart of good old brandy after it is racked off, to the barrel, and give it air by leaving the bung quite loose.
This mode of manufacturing wine for domestic use, is convenient and not expensive to those who have it in their power to manufacture maple sugar. But the nice housewife or husbandmen of ingenuity, will, I fancy, devise some more neat mode of compressing the juice from the grape—as pressing it by the hand, would seem less cleanly, though the fermentation generally cleanses sufficiently.
Currant Wine
Is managed in the same way. The same quantity of sugar is presumed to answer—The juice is generally well strained thro' cloths, and when well stirred, &c. with the sugar, and neatly racked off, is put by in a loft to ripen, in sweet casks.
ART. II.
Directions for making Cider, British mode.
The apples after being thrown into a heap should always be covered from the weather. The later the cider is made the better, as the juice is then more perfectly ripened, and less danger to be feared from fermentation. Nothing does more harm to cider than a mixture of rotten apples with the sound. The apples ought to be ground so close as to break the seeds which gives the liquor an agreeable bitter. The pumice should be pressed through hair bags, and the juice strained through two sieves, the uppermost of hair, the lower of muslin. After this the cider should be put into open casks, when great attention is necessary to discover the exact time in which the pumice still remaining in the juice, rises on the top, which happens from the third to the tenth day, according as the weather is more or less warm. This body does not remain on top more than two hours; consequently, care should be taken to draw off the cider before it sinks, which may be done by means of a plug. When drawn off, the cider is put into casks. Particular attention is again required to prevent the fermentation, when the least inclination towards it is discovered. This may be done by a small quantity of cider spirits, about one gallon to the hogshead. In March the cider should be again drawn off, when all risque of fermentation ceases. Then it should be put into good sweet casks, and in three years from that time, it will be fit for bottling. Old wine casks are to be preferred; those which contain rum are ruinous to cider. Large earthen vessels might be made with or without glazing, which would be preferable to any wooden vessel whatever. When we compare this with the hasty American mode of making cider, it is not to be wondered at that the English cider so infinitely excels ours.