Country folk brew wine from numberless things--and the marvel is
how they survive the drinking. Yet some of the simple wines are
excellent--as parsnip wine and sloe gin. Beside all care in the making,
the secret of parsnip wine is to brew it at the right time, which
is just after fresh top growth begins in roots left in the ground,
when the spine of the parsnips themselves turns as tough as wood. A
good recipe from a keeper's note-book is this: Take three pounds of
parsnips, a quarter of an ounce of hops, three pounds of lump sugar,
and one gallon of water. Wash, clean, slice and boil the parsnips until
tender. Add the hops, boil for five minutes, strain on to the sugar,
and stir until the sugar dissolves. When the liquor is lukewarm add
yeast, and when the working is done, barrel, bung, bottle and drink in
due season.
We would give a word of warning to the inexperienced: Do not sample
home-brewed wines too freely, however freely offered. Country folk
put quantity before quality, and seldom offer their wines in anything
but tumblers--and if you manage to empty one tumbler, you will need
will-power, if not willingness, to avoid taking another glassful.
To leave a drop of home-brewed wine, when once you have tasted it,
is an insult to the maker. We remember how the wife of a keeper was
unjustly blamed for the power of her rhubarb wine, of which a caller
had partaken freely. He went his way smacking his lips; lighting his
pipe, he strolled happily along a path of rabbit-mown turf, through a
fine old park. But in a little while he felt a desire to lie down, and
soon his groans were spreading panic among the park deer. He cursed the
gamekeeper's wife and her rhubarb wine; but it turned out that he had
borrowed from the keeper a little flowers of sulphur, which, escaping
from its packet, had found a way into his pipe: hence his pain and
sickness.