Raisin Wine, Which, If Long Kept, Really Resembles Foreign

Instructions

1. NOTE BEFORE STARTING: Acton states she has not had this receipt tried herself. She has tasted wine made by it which had been five years kept, and which so much resembled a rich foreign wine that she could with difficulty believe it English-made.
2. First boil the water that is to be used for the wine, and let it again become perfectly cold.
3. Put into a sound sweet cask eight pounds of fine Malaga raisins for each gallon of water to be used, taking out only the quite large stalks. The fruit and water may be put in alternately until the cask is full, the raisins being well pressed down in it.
4. Lay the bung lightly over. Stir the wine every day or two, and keep the cask full by adding more water that has, like the first, been boiled and left to go quite cold.
5. As soon as the fermentation has entirely ceased - which may be in from six to seven weeks - press in the bung and leave the wine untouched for twelve months.
6. Draw it off then into a clean cask, and fine it if necessary with isinglass tied in a muslin and suspended in it.
7. Obs.: the refuse raisins make admirable vinegar if fresh water be poured to them and the cask placed in the sun. March is the best time for making the wine.