[Sca-cooks] Blueberry/ Gooseberry Wine Documentation?
Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius at verizon.net
Mon Jan 19 02:17:50 PST 2004
Also sprach "Christine Breakstone" <breakstone_christine at hotmail.com>:
>Good day!
> I am new to the list. I am looking for documentation for gooseberry
>wine and blueberry wine. Are these adaptable to period recipes? I
>believe I found something on the gooseberry wine, but I have never
>documented anything for A&S entry. Also, I have found "bilberry"
>juice, so it seems to stand to reason that wine would have been a
>result of the fermentation of juice. Thanks for your help!
> ~Christine of
>Hunter's Home
The first thing that comes to [my] mind is to wonder whether either
of these berry juices have enough sugars on their own to make a
palatable and stable fermented product. I don't know about bilberry
juice (you might also look under blaeberry, but the blueberries we
tend to get commercially, anyway, are native to the Americas, I
thought), but gooseberry wine today is made with a considerable
amount of added sugar, sugar that would have been quite expensive
prior to the 15th century in Europe and not cheap even after that.
There's a reason why the standard non-imported drinks of the
countries that didn't grow grapes in period Europe tended to be ales
and meads. Grape wines only are mentioned in John Lyly's Elizabethan
poem beginning, "Oh, for a bowl of fat Canary, rich Palermo,
sparkling sherry..." -- not conclusive evidence, but something of an
indicator...
While Sir Kenelm Digby does make the occasional foray into non-grape
wines (and he's writing, or rather published posthumously, in 1669
CE) with things like cherry wine, also with sugar added in at least
the first recipe I can think of, the one that I use, I think you're
probably going to find that the majority of non-grape "country" wines
are later than the SCA period.
On the other hand, since these fruits are ideal for fermentation with
added sugar sources, it seems to me that meads, metheglins, pyments
and fruited ales would be the thing to look for.
I'm cc'ing this reply to a lady I know who has done a great deal more
research into vintning than I have; let's see if she can suggest
anything.
Adamantius
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list