Allow three gallons of soft water (measured after it has boiled an
hour) to six gallons of gooseberries, which must be full ripe. Top
and tail the gooseberries; put them, a few at a time, into a
wooden dish, and with a rolling-pin or beetle break and mash every
one; transferring them, as they are done, into a large stone jar.
Pour the boiling water upon the mashed gooseberries; cover the
jar, and let them stand twelve hours. Then strain and measure the
juice, and to each quart allow three-quarters of a pound of loaf-sugar;
mix it with the liquid, and let it stand eight or nine
hours to dissolve, stirring it several times.
Then pour it into a keg of proper size for containing it, and let
it ferment at the bung-hole; filling it up as it works out with
some of the liquor reserved for that purpose. As soon as it ceases
to hiss, stop it close with a cloth wrapped round the bung. A pint
of white brandy for every gallon of the gooseberry wine may be
added on bunging it up. At the end of four or five months it will
probably be fine enough to bottle off. It is best to bottle it in
cold frosty weather. You may refine it by allowing to every gallon
of wine the whites of two eggs, beaten to a froth, with a very
small tea-spoonful of salt. When the white of egg, &c, is a stiff
froth, take out a quart of the wine, and mix them well together.
Then pour it into the cask, and in a few days it will be fine and
clear. You may begin to use it any time after it is bottled. Put
two or three raisins in the bottom of each bottle. They will tend
to keep the wine from any farther fermentation.
Fine gooseberry wine has frequently passed for champagne. Keep the
bottles in saw-dust, lying on their sides.