Grandmother's Cherry Bounce

Ingredients

• 1 gallon black wild cherries
• 5 gallons Morello cherries
• blade mace
• whole cloves
• allspice
• a very little bruised ginger
• nutmeg
• 20 pounds sugar
• 1 barrel corn whiskey

Instructions

1. Rinse a clean, empty whiskey barrel thoroughly with cold water and drain it well. Fill with very ripe Morello cherries mixed with black wild cherries in the proportion of one gallon wild cherries to five gallons Morellos.
2. Strew blade mace, whole cloves, allspice, a very little bruised ginger, and grated nutmeg scantily through the cherries.
3. Add sugar in the proportion of half a pound to each gallon of fruit (twenty pounds to a full barrel).
4. Cover the fruit an inch deep with good corn whiskey—the older and milder the better. Leave the bung out but cover the opening with lawn (fine linen cloth).
5. Let stand undisturbed in a dry, airy, rather warm place for six months.
6. Rack off into a clean barrel and let stand for six months longer.
7. Bottle or put in demijohns. This improves greatly with age up to five years; after that the change is unappreciable.