The bottles must be all sound, clean, and dry, with plenty of good sound corks.
The cork is to be put in with the hand, and then driven well in with a flat wooden mallet, the weight of which ought to be a pound and a quarter, but however, not to exceed a pound and a half, for if the mallet be too light or too heavy it will not drive the cork in properly, and may break the bottle. The corks must so completely fill up the neck of each bottle as to render them air tight, but leave a space of an inch between the wine and the cork.
When all the wine is bottled, it is to be stored in a cool cellar, and on no account on the bottles’ bottoms, but on their sides and in saw-dust.
146. MR. CARNELL’s RECEIPT FOR RED GOOSEBERRY WINE.
Take cold soft water, 10 gallons,
red gooseberries, 11 gallons, and ferment.
Now mix raw sugar, 16 lbs.
beet-root, sliced, 2 lbs. and
red tartar, in fine powder, 3 ounces.
Afterwards put in sassafras chips, 1 lb. and
brandy, 1 gallon, or less.
This will make 18 gallons.
147. Another.
When the weather is dry, gather gooseberries about the time they are half ripe; pick them clean, put the quantity of a peck into a convenient vessel, and bruise them with a piece of wood, taking as much care as possible to keep the seeds whole. Now, having put the pulp into a canvass-bag, press out all the juice; and to every gallon of the gooseberries add about three pounds of fine loaf-sugar: mix the whole together by stirring it with a stick, and as soon as the sugar is quite dissolved, pour it into a convenient cask, which will hold it exactly. If the quantity be about eight or nine gallons, let it stand a fortnight; if twenty gallons, forty days, and so on in proportion; taking care the place you set it in be cool. After standing the proper time, draw it off from the lees, and put it into another clean vessel of equal size, or into the same, after pouring the lees out, and making it clean; let a cask of ten or twelve gallons stand for about three months, and twenty gallons for five months, after which it will be fit for bottling off.