Cherry wine is one of the many different kinds of fruit wines that are especially good for cooking or as art of dessert. You can purchase them on line but can also make your own and the Internet has several recipes using sour cherries, sweet cherries, and a combination of the two. My paternal grandmother included two recipes for cherry wine in her book Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wines, but does not specify the kind of cherries but adds currants to one of them.
In the words of my grandmother:
TO MAKE CHERRY WINE
Pull of the stalks of the cherries, and mash them without breaking the stones; then press them hard through a hair bag, and to every gallon of liquor, put two pounds of sugar. The vessel must be full, and let it work as long as it makes a noise in the vessel; then stop it up close for a month or more, and when it is fine, draw it into dry bottles, and put a lump of sugar into every bottle. If it makes them fly, open them all for a moment, and then stop them up again. It will be fit to drink in a quarter of a year.
CHERRY WINE, NO. 2
Fifteen pounds of cherries, two pounds of currants. Bruise them together. Mix with them two-thirds of the kernels, and put the whole of the cherries, currants, and kernels into a barrel, with one-quarter pound of sugar to every pint of juice. The barrel must be quite full. Cover the barrel with vine leaves, and sand above them, and let it stand until it has done working, which will be in about three weeks; then stop it with a bung, and in two months’ time it may be bottled.
2. Gather the cherries when quite ripe. Pull them from their stalks, and press them though a hair sieve. To every gallon of liquor add two pounds of lump sugar finely beaten; stir all together, and put it into a vessel that will just hold it. When it has done fermenting, stop it close for three months, and then bottle it off for use.
[Editor’s note: I think Grandmother was hitting the juice when she wrote CHERRY WINE, NO. 2]
To buy Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wines by Helen S. Wright from Amazon.com Click Here.