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Gooseberry Wine

4 servings

Ingredients

• Gooseberries, ripe (as needed)
• Well water, same amount as must (as needed)
• 250 g Brown sugar, good, per liter of liquid

Instructions

1. Only use very ripe, almost translucent berries.
2. Carefully pick, clean, and press them as completely as possible.
3. Add an equal amount of well water to the must strained through linen, and add 250 grams of good brown sugar per liter of liquid.
4. Pour the juice into a barrel and place it in the cellar to ferment, covering the bung hole with a linen cloth.
5. Clean the bung hole and cloth daily of any accumulated foam.
6. After a few days, fermentation will be complete.
7. Replace the liquid lost through fermentation with equal parts of mixed gooseberry juice and water, so that the barrel is completely full, then seal it with a wooden bung and let it rest undisturbed for six months.
8. Afterward, the gooseberry wine can be bottled.

Modernized from a treasured 19th-century German cookbook.