In 1954, The National Federation of Women's Institutes published Home Made Wines Syrups and Cordials. Offering the reader a guide to brewing wines, ales & beers, liqueurs, syrups, cordials, kinds of vinegar and cough cures, there are some interesting recipes for hedgerow wines which are as relevant to us today as they were all those years ago.
For your interest and possibly pleasure, one of the original WI wine-making recipes is described below.
All measurements are of the Imperial variety (pounds and ounces) and the original recipes call for a variety of additions to purify the final product to make it fit for consumption.
Blackberry Wine I
The master recipe for Blackberry Wine requires cultivated blackberries, pectozyme, wine yeast (optional), white sugar and Campden Tablets.
"Crush the ripe fruit in a bowl, add a quarter of an ounce of Pectozyme for every 8 pounds of berries, mix thoroughly and cover with a cloth. Give the mixture a stir several times for the next two or three days. Strain through muslin and squeeze out any juice left in the pulp. Dissolve three Campden tablets in each gallon of juice, pour into a jar and leave for a further two days. Add three pounds of sugar for each gallon followed by the yeast.
The sweetened, yeasted liquid is poured into a glass jar or clean cask until it is filled. Any surplus is kept in a bottle for topping up the main bulk during fermentation. The jar or cask is placed on a tray and kept in a warm room. In a short time fermentation starts and froth pours over the side of the container into the tray. When the froth no longer forms, the tray is removed, the jar cleaned and an air-lock or loosely fitted cork inserted. As soon as the fermentation process is complete ie gas bubbles are no longer formed, the wine is treated thus: add three-quarters of a pound of sugar, stir until dissolved, re-insert the airlock and allow to ferment in a warm room once more. When gas is no longer formed, taste the wine and if it is not sweet, add another three-quarters of a pound of sugar and re-ferment. This should be repeated until the sugar remains unfermented.
Finally, place the jar in a cool room for fourteen days, then syphon the partially clarified liquid with a tube into a clean jar, taking care not to disturb the yeast deposit. Make sure the second jar (storage jar) is completely full when the cork is inserted, wax the top of the cork and store in a cold cellar for six months."