1885 New Guide Hotel Bar Restaurant

THE NEW GUIDE FOR HOTELS, ETC.

78

Marsala.

(Imitation,)

Take 7 lbs. of raisins, pass them through a mincing machine — put them into the fermenting tub. Prepare a wort of 2J gallons of water, boiled with 4 lbs. of brown sugar, and pour on to the raisins. The wort should boil from to f of an hour. Stir the raisins well up, so that they may thoroughly mix with the water. Cover it up with a clean blanket. Stir every day thoroughly for 3 days, and leave it to ferment. In about a fortnight or 3 weeks, it will become perfectly still ; then is the time to take off the head, strain the liquor and press the fruit. Put it into a small 3 gallon cask, leave it for a few days with the bung out, fine it with good ale finings. In 3 days draw off and bottle in champagne bottles — cork and wire, and you will have a delicious sparkling wine ; but if you allow it to re- main for 6 months in the barrel, it will resemble Marsala more than anything else, and can be bottled accordingly. For every gallon of wine you wish to make, you must have \ a gallon of fruit. Bruise the fruit and if you take the trouble to crack about 100 stones from each gallon, so much the better will the wine be. Supposing you wish to make 7 gallons of wine, take 3J gallons of damsons. Boil 3J gallons of water, and 7 lbs. of sugar together. Pour this in a boiling hot state over the fruit. Stir it up well and add a tea cup full of yeast, when it is nearly cold. Cover it over with a blanket, and let it work away for 3 or 4 days. Then when the head is fiat, skim it off, strain and press the juice from the fruit. Put the liquor into a sweet brandy barrel with 1 lb. of raisins passed through the mincing machine. Damson Wine. See that the fruit is gathered in dry weather.