[Sca-cooks] Blueberry/ Gooseberry Wine Documentation?

[Jeff Gedney]

>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.

Right, this is a critical distinction with Digby and his culinary contemporaries...  
the establishment of a real bulk sugar trade in the West Indies was after period, in the 1630's - 1640's... 

This is not to say that the Spanish were not indulging in the sugar plantation enterprise in the 1500's... 
Indeed by the late 16th century the spanish were trading shiploads of sugar out of both Puerto Rico and the Canary Islands, which cargos were rich prizes for French and English privateers.
But these efforts were nowhere near the scale that later came to dominate the Carribean. the bulk of the Spanish and Portuguese effort in the new world was in the extraction of Silver and some Gold from the Americas. 

Prior to 1640 you really ought to view sugar as having been an expensive nicety, more like a spice than the commdity we are used to commodity. 

This is not to say that it would not be used in making a cordial or other beverage, but for fermented or even distilled beverages it's use as a fermentable sugar would have been quite exceptional. I can think of none of these from period, excepting a mention of a beverage distilled form fermented white sugar, and drunk by the muslim rulers of AAchen (not the German town, but the Indonesian kingdom famous for exporting pepper). This was considered allowed by the Quran as it was not "of the grape". It was, however restricted, by law, to the Kings table.


>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.

Aya, I'd tend to think you were likely to see a bilberry meade, myself, especially in Northern Europe. 

Brandu