The Complete Confectioner (1800)/Artificial Wines
THE METHOD OF MAKING ARTIFICIAL WINES, OF RECOVERING FADED AND SUCH WINES AS HAVE LOST THEIR COLOUR, AND OF RACKING, SWEETENING, &c.
It is certain that weak wines may be raised and improved on the rich lees of wine that is drawn off; and indeed it is common to draw off such small wines, and put them on such lees; by this the profit of the vintners is greatly enlarged. We also see that wine is fed with proper food, as sweet flesh, salt of tartar, or of the sweet and volatile spirit of tartar; but more especially with the quintessence of wine, essential salts, prepared oils, herbs, and things of an aromatical nature: why then may not small wine be greatly bettered by the animal spirit or quintessence extracted from other wines? for the animal part of wine only and nothing else, can increase the strength of wine. If the quintessence be drawn out of one small wine, and added to another, it will make that rich, though the other is altogether impoverished: for this reason it is better that one be lost, which may serve for vinegar, than both remain useless. This cannot be so well demonstrated by words as by practice; for which reason we shall give some examples to prove what has been said.
Take the juice of water of clary, distil it in a cold still, one part; redstreak cyder, half a part; Malaga raisins, beaten in a mortar, six pounds; the fat mother of claret, one pounds; cover them in a close vessel for fifteen days, to ferment; then draw off the liquor into another vessel, and to every gallon and half a pint of the juice of mulberries, blackberries, or gooseberries, and a pint of the spirit of clary; to the whole put three spoonfuls of flour, and the whites of two new-laid eggs, with a drachm of isinglass; beat these together, and add to the liquor two pounds of the syrup of clary, and it will refine down, and be very rich, not distinguishable from the right claret, unless by those well skilled in wines.
Take a cask that has been well seasoned with right old Malaga, new trim it, and hoop it strong, leaving it open at one end, to which open end a close cover must be fitted, to take off and put on at pleasure, and keep it in all seasons in a warm place; fill it with spring or conduit water, and so every gallon of water add six pounds of the best Malaga raisins, well bruised, and sprinkled on every twenty gallons a handful of calx wine; then place the cover close; and keep it warm with cloths fastened about it, and let it continue so four or five days to work and ferment; after than open it, to see if the raisins are floating on the top of the water; if you find they are, press them down again, and do so every four or five days, letting them stand three weeks or a month; then tap the vessel three or four inches above the bottom, and try if the liquor tastes; and if it does not, let it stand longer, till it has got the true flavour; then draw it off into another cask that has had Malaga in it, and to every twenty gallons put a pint of the best aqua vitæ, a quart of Alicant wine, and two new laid eggs beaten together, and let it stand in a vaulted cellar, or such like place, till it be fit for drinking; if it want sweetness, put in a little fine loaf sugar, and it will abundantly answer your expectation: and this dashed with a little white wine, or brisk pippin cyder, may pass for Canary.
And thus, not only artificial Malaga may be made, but other artificial wines; for it cannot but be supposed that an ingenious person may, by these examples, invent and prepare other sorts of wines different from these in taste; for having once got a knowledge of the different herbs that bear a similarity to the different sulphur of the true wine, whether styptic, acid, mild, luscious, fat, or balsamic, so must the imitation of the different sorts of wines be, whether Ribella, Tent, Rapadavia, Canary, or any others: as for white wine or rhenish, you may make them of sweeter or tarter cyders, as you find in the directions given for making artificial claret, bating the colouring; though your must be at the labour and charge of fining them more, on purpose to keep up a good body.
Take the wine down to the lees in another cask, where the lees of good wine are fresh; then take a pint of strong aqua vitæ, scrape half a pound of yellow bees-wax into it, and by heating the spirit over a gentle fire melt the wax; then dip in it a cloth, and set it on fire with a brim-stone match, put it in flaming at the bung, and stop the cask close.
Stir it well with a flat-ended stick, till you have removed it in all parts, and made it ferment, but do not touch the lees; then pour in a pint of aqua vitæ, and stop it up close, and at the end of ten days it will be tolerably restored. Wine that is decayed by too much vent, may be recovered by putting burning brimstone or hot crusts of bread into it.
To remedy this, rack it off upon lees of rich wine of the same sort; then put into a bag four ounces of the powder of lenerel berries, and two ounces of the filings of steel; let it hang by a string to the middle of the wine, and so by degrees lower it, as you draw it off.
Put a pound of butter melted in fair water into your cask, pretty warm, and stop it close.
Bake a longer roller of dough, stuck well with cloves; let it thoroughly bake, and hang it in your cask, and it will remove the ill scent from the wine, by gathering it to itself.
Take half a peck of barley, and boil it in two quarts of water, till one half of the water be wasted; strain it, let it settle well, and pour it into the wine cask, stirring it without touching the lees.
Put in a little vinegar, wherein litherage had been well steeped, and boiled some honey to draw out the wax; strain it through a cloth, and put a quart of it into a tierce, which will improve it, in summer especially. Some, when they perceive the wine turning, put in a stone of unslacked lime; this will make it very good.
Boil a gallon of wine, with some beaten oyster shells and crabs' claws calcined; strain out the liquid part, and when it is cool put it into green wine, and it will give it a pleasant lively taste.
Fill it upon the lees, put a handful of the flowers of clary, and infuse in it; add a pound of mustard seed dry ground, which must be sunk in a bag to the bottom of the cask.
Take English galingal and cloves, of each a drachm; beat them to powder, and infuse them a day and a night in a pint of aqua vitæ, in a wooden vessel kept close covered; then put it into good claret, and it will make twelve or fourteen gallons of fine malmsey in five or six days; the drugs may be hung in a bag in the cask.
Take a pint of wheat, and boil it in a quart of water till it bursts and becomes very soft; then squeeze it through a new linen cloth, and put a pint of the liquid part into a hogshead of unsettled white wine, and it will fine it.
Take a good brisk rhenish wine, or white wine, and put into it a pound of Roman wormwood in a bag, clean stripped from the stalks, and well dried; and in ten or twelve days infusion it will give it a taste and curious colour beyond what it had before: this may be done as it is drawn, by dropping three or four drops of chemical spirit, or oil of wormwood, into a quart of wine.
Put a quart of claret to two quarts of sloes, and bake them in a gentle oven till they have stewed out a great part of their moisture; then pour off what is liquid, and squeeze out the rest; and half a pint of this will make ten gallons rough.
To do this effectually, rack the wine from the lees, and if the colour of the wine be faint and tawny, put in coniac lees, and put the wine upon them, rolling and shaking them together a considerable time in the cask; in ten or twelve days rack off the wine, and it will be of a proper colour, and drink brisk and fine.
Take an ounce of roach-alum powder, draw out four gallons of the wine, and strew the powder over it; beat it well for the space of half of an hour, then fill up the cask, and set it on broach, being careful to let it take vent; by this means, in three or four days you will find it a curious brisk wine.
This is done with such instruments as are useful, and appropriated to the manner of doing it, and cannot be so well described by words as by seeing it done; however, observe this in doing it: let it be when the wind sets full north, and the weather is temperate and clear, that the air may the better agree with the constitution of the wine, and make it take more kindly. It is likewise most proper to do it in the increase of the moon, when she is under the earth, and not in full height, &c.
Take two ounces of powder of sulphur, half an ounce of calamus, incorporate them well together, and put them into a pint and an half of orange water; let them steep in it a considerable time, and then drawing off the water, melt the sulphur and calamus in an iron pan, and dip in it as many rags as will soak it up, which put into the cask; then rack your wine, and put in a pint of rose water, and stopping the hogshead, roll it up and down half an hour, after which let it continue still two days; and by so ordering any Gascoigne, or red wine, it will have a pleasant scent and taste.
When you have set you cask a-broach, place a coarse linen cloth before the bore, then put in the linen and rack it in a dry cask; add five or six ounces of the powder of alum, roll and shake them sufficiently together, and upon settling it will be fined down, and prove a very pleasant wine both in taste and scent.
If these wines have an unpleasant taste, the best way is speedily to draw them off, and to one half of the wine put two gallons of new milk, a handful of bay-salt, and as much rice; mix and beat them well together for half an hour, with a staff or paddler; then fill up the cask, and when you have rolled it well, turn it over in the lees, and two or three days after you make broach, and it will drink very fine and brisk.
Take a gallon or more of morning's milk, put it into the cask, and mix it well with rolling; when you perceive it is quite settled, put in three or four ounces of isinglass, and about a quarter of a pound of loaf sugar, fine scraped; then fill up the hogshead or other cask, and roll it four or five times over; and this will bring it to a colour and fineness.
Take a pint of clarified honey, a pint of water, wherein raisins of the sum have been well steeped, and three quarters of a pint of good white wine, or claret, according as the colour of your wine is; let them simmer and boil a little over a gentle fire, to the consumption of a third part, taking off the scum as fast as it rises; put it very hot into the vitiated wine, and let it stand, the bung hole being open; then put a little bruised mace, nutmegs and cloves into a linen bag, and hang it in the wine by a string, for three or four days; by so doing either new or old wine will not only be fined, but much bettered; for by this means they are restored from their foulness and decay, and yield a good scent and taste; you may, to make this work, more perfect, when you take out the spice, hang in a small bag of white mustard seed, a little bruised.
Take a stone bottle that will hold about three quarts of water; put into it three ounces of refined salt-petre, half an ounce of Florence orrice, and fill it with water boiling hot; stop it close, and immediately let it down into a well, where it must remain three or four hours; and when you break the bottle, you will find it full of hard ice: or, for want of this opportunity, dissolve a pound of nitre in a pail of water, and it will cool your bottles exceedingly.
Take salt of tartar, and pour distilled vinegar on it till it is assatiated, every time you draw off the phlegm, and then distil it into a coated retort by degrees; and rectify the oil through the spirit of vitriol, which will render it lucid, fragrant, and very pleasant. A small quantity of the powder put in a linen rag, and hung in the cask, will refresh and meliorate, if not recover, foul, pricked, or faded wine, in a short time.
Wines may also be enriched by essential and fragrant oils, made in such a manner as to incorporate with water or spirits of wine, or other wine; after being diluted by proper fermentation, they are easily united, and the body of the wine much enriched.
It is necessary to observe, that although we have been very exact in specifying the particular quantity of each ingredient used in the making, as well as mending the wines treated of, yet every man's palate should be consulted by those who are employed to do the business; and your own judgment will direct you how to lessen or increase any part, in proportion, according to the taste of the employer.