How to Make Wines

METHOD 2 - continue

…Plug the  neck of the jar with cotton wool or fit a fermentation lock and ferment in  a warm place for fourteen days.

After this, boil the remaining sugar in the remaining half-pint of water for  one minute and when cool add it to the rest. refit the lock or plug the  neck of the jar with fresh cotton wool and leave in a warm place until all  fermentation has ceased. The recipes are designed to make one gallon of  wine, it two gallons are being made at once twice the amount of each  ingredient must be used (including Campden tablets) and the sugar and  water added in double quantities. This principle applies where three or  four gallons are being made and it is easy enough to work out. Just to be  sure that mistakes do not occur when adding the syrup-sugar and water- stick a label on the jar and note on this the amount added. Readers will be  quick to appreciate that certain fruits are more suitable than others for  making certain types of wine. Clearly, it would be as hopeless to try to  make port from rhubarb as it would be to try to grow potatoes on a pear  tree, and I think it is in this respect that many people go astray; they make  wines from the cheapest and most readily available fruits (naturally  enough) but they do not give the slightest thought to what the result will  be or whether they will like it or not. Before you begin decide on the  type of wine you are most likely to prefer and then use the fruit and the  method which will make this type of wine. Elderberries make an  excellent port-style wine and many variations, each with the basic port  style underlying them, so that from this lowly wild fruit we may obtain  not only a full-bodied port-style wine, but also a Burgundy style, a claret  and others according to the whim of the operator.
Blackberries make similar wines, as do certain varieties of plumbs,  damsons and black currants. The juice from lighter-colored fruit such as  raspberries, loganberries, red and white currants and others make  excellent table wines. But there is no need to cover this aspect fully here  because every recipe is preceded by the name of the type or style of wine  that can be expected from each recipe. I say ‘expected’ because to  guarantee that the wine will be identical to the one expected would be  unwise, but only because the amounts of sugar and acid present in the  fruits vary from season to season-indeed, they vary with the type of tree,  soil, situation and with the sort of summer we have had while the fruits  have been growing. A hot summer produces fruits containing more sugar  and less acid than a wet sunless summer, when the effect is the reverse.
In each recipe appears the name of the best yeast to use and this is best  added as a nucleus as already described. If you must ‘use bakers’ yeast or a dried yeast, merely sprinkle it over the surface of the ‘must’ at the time  given in the method you are using.
A final word. Make sure all fruits are ripe. This is far more important than  most people imagine. Half-ripe fruits or those with green patches on them  should be discarded as it needs only one or two of these to give a gallon  of wine an acid bite. Fully ripe fruit is essential if we hope to make the  best wine.
When we have decided that our garden fruits are ripe enough or those you  have your eye on in the hedgerows, leave them for another three or four  days before gathering.