Foreword - Ist is about four years since I first had the good fortune to receive a letter from Harold Bravery. I re­member it well. A thin morning, it was.

In case you do not know what a thin morning is, let me explain. In the life of a newspaper columnist there are two sorts of morning.

There is the morning upon which ideas whizz and dodge round the brainbox like traffic around Piccadilly Circus; all telephones in sight (a columnist's office is like a bookmaker's - all telephones and ashtrays) are ringing at once, with chaps at the other end of the line eagerly describing useful stories; the mail is crammed with pungent, controversial stuff; and the whole prob­lem facing the chap at the typewriter is what to use from this embarras de richesse for his column, and what to cast aside.

Author's Preface - I hope that this book will be the means by which count­less people will derive the pleasure and satisfaction which comes from drinking wines that they have made in their own homes. Those who have failed, or have been disappointed with previous attempts, will find the reasons in this book - and the remedy.

All those who wish they could make strong, delicious crystal-clear wines need wish in vain no longer: they can make them, easily, quickly and for a trifling initial outlay. And in order to make each process as easy as possible to understand, I shall deal with each one separ­ately and in detail

01. Begin With - If you want to make wine there is no excuse for not doing so: you need neither license nor cellar and the utensils may already be in your house, flat or caravan -for wine may be made in the smallest of places. To make a couple of gallons of wine is no more bother than to bake a tray of cakes or pickle a few jars of onions, and in comparison the rewards of your labours are far more pleasurable.

02. Root Wines - Many of the following root-wine recipes, and certain of the special recipes, call for the addition of wheat or raisins. When these are bought they are usually a little dirty and contain harmful bacteria. They should be washed in cold water, and then immersed - in a muslin or cloth bag - in boiling water for about a minute before using.

The first two recipes here, one for parsnip and an­other for potato wine, are recommended to the begin­ner.

03. Other Vegetables - Celery Wine

4 lb. celery • 3 lemons • 4 lb. sugar

1 oz. yeast • 5 quarts water

Wash the celery as you would for the table. The coarse outer sticks and the white leaves may be used provided all bruised or badly discolored parts are first cut away. Cut the celery into small pieces and pour the boiling water over them. Then cut up the lemons and put them in with the rest. Leave to soak overnight. Bring gently to boiling-point and then cut off the heat.

04. Special Recipes - The recipes in this chapter are a little more expensive than most (though many of them contain wheat, which is quite cheap), but the wines that result from them are well worth the extra cost. They also offer wide scope for those who like to experiment (see Chapter n, 'If You Experiment'). And finally there is much to be said for using ingredients that do not need a lot of scrubbing and boiling in their preparation.

05. Fruit Wines - It will be noted that in the following fruit wine recipes the soaking period is very short. If readers fear that they won't get much goodness from the fruit in that little time, let me assure them that they will get all they. need. Long periods of soaking merely invite the wild yeast on the fruit and in the air to begin that 'undesirable fer­ment* I have already mentioned. The short soaking period is a safeguard against this, and the boiling of the juices destroys the yeast organisms but at the same time is not long enough to give the wine a * cooked-fruit' flavor. (For wines with this flavor, see p. 129.)

06. Sherry - The flavor of commercial sherry is obtained from a bacterial growth called flor, the secret of which is ½eal­ously guarded by the sherry producers of Spain. So we cannot give our home-made sherry that unmistakable flavor; nevertheless, the following recipes will produce good imitations of that much-blended, much fortified wine.

These sherries are neither sweet nor dry: they are designed to suit the average palate. If you like your sherry very dry, use only two pounds of sugar.

07. Dried-fruit Wines - Raisin Wine

3 lb. raisins • 2 oranges • 2 lemons

2½ lb. sugar • 1 oz. yeast • 9 pints water

Chop the raisins and pour the boiling water over them. Leave to soak for forty-eight hours, stirring occasion­ally. Then crush well with the hands and strain. Into this liquid squeeze the oranges and lemons and bring the whole liquid just to boiling-point. Pour this over the sugar and stir until all the sugar is dissolved.

08. Flower + Sugar - These flower wines clear very readily without the use of isinglass; they are usually high in proof spirit, and their flavors are delicately aromatic.

Clover Wine (mauve)

3 quarts clover heads • 1 grapefruit

3½ lb. sugar • 1 oz. yeast • 1 gallon water

When the flowers have been gathered, pull off the petals

- they will all come easily if you hold the petals in one
hand and the base of the flower head in the other.

Bring the water to boiling-point and pour in the flow­ers. Cut off the heat at once and allow to soak for four days. Strain and warm the juice enough to help the sugar dissolve.

09. Mixed Drinks - Hot Punch

3 pints of old ale or good-quality beer

(not bottled ale)

1 pint home-made wine (orange, lemon, grape­fruit or strongly-flavored root-wine is best)

1 sliced lemon • pinch of ginger • 1 clove

Bring the ale or beer to boiling-point and cut off the heat at once. Pour in the wine and then add the ginger and clove. Use the sliced lemon only if lemon wine has not been used - squeeze it into the mixture and leave the slices floating while you keep the brew hot on a low gas for five minutes. Strain and serve hot.

10. Cider + Stout - As a child I well remember the traveling cider press that clanked to a standstill at the gate of my grandpar­ents' cottage. Its arrival was anticipated weeks ahead and most people had their apples ready, with the bar­rels and other things needed for the job of converting the apple into the drink of the countryman. I was too young to be able to remember all the details of those days, but I can recall that my grandfather used to com­mandeer every local child, not already employed by its parents, to help collect the apples, and woe betide any of them that ate an apple before the job was finished.

11. Experiment - Vegetable wine, fruit wine, flower wine - there are hun­dreds of recipes, all different yet all basically the same; and if you like to experiment there is a vast field in which to do so. If you consider the sherry recipes as examples of fruit and vegetable mixtures for the pur­pose of making delicious wines, you will see at once that experiment is worth while.

During the last war, when sugar for wine-making was unobtainable, tinned syrup and 'sugar' obtained by boil­ing packet dates with the little real sugar I did happen to acquire, helped to keep my little brewery working, if only to the extent of half a dozen gallons a year. The wine was not nearly as good as that turned out today, but cheer was hard to come by and anything reasonably good was better than nothing at all.

12. Wine-making - When you are, as you surely will be, turning out gallon upon gallon of delicious, crystal-clear wines, and when you have mastered the technique of blending (if you want to), and have experimented a little of your own accord, you may, like many other people, try to make your wine even better.

The idea of distilling home-made wines occurs to most people at some time or other and, fortunately, the idea dies as quickly as it is conceived. A few people, however, do try tampering with the stuff: and it is to these tempted few that this warning is directed.

13. Scientific Approach - I have often been accused of complicating simple mat­ters. This is untrue, for wine-making is a very compli­cated business, yet simple enough when it is fully un­derstood. Thousands of people believe that making wine is merely a matter of producing a liquid containing sugar, flavoring mediums and yeast and then allowing the wine to make itself under any sort of unhygienic conditions. Readers will know by now how false this belief really is, and they will not be surprised to learn that there is quite a lot of chemistry in the 'know-how* of wine-making.

14. Fruit Wines - As will be seen, any of the three methods described in Chapter 13 may be used with these recipes, but it must be borne in mind that to produce a port or burgundy the skins of the fruit must be fermented for a time (Method 2); and that some fruits are more suitable for making these wine types than are others (see p. 184).

Blackberry Port

4 or 5 lb. blackberries • 7 pints water

4 lb. sugar • port yeast • nutrient

Campden tablet

15. Grape Wines - Ordinarily, sixteen to twenty pounds of grapes are needed to make one gallon of wine, and water is not usually added. If it is, sugar will also have to be added. The whole bunches, complete with stalks, are fer­mented in the crushed state for a time; the juice is then wrung out (crushed if a press is available), and the juice then fermented to completion.

If, for the sake of economy, water has to be added, sugar must also be added because we shall have reduced the sugar content by diluting the must.

16. Stewed Fruit - This chapter deals with a method of making fruit wine quite distinct from anything already described in this book: don't confuse the two methods or try to use half of one and half of another.

Most people like the characteristic flavor of raw fruit to remain in the finished wines and, personally, I like this in most wines; indeed, it would not seem like wine if I could not detect at once the fruit used in its making. (With root wines this does not apply: potato wine never tastes of potatoes.)

17. Dried Fruit - Surprisingly good wines may be made from dried fruits, especially when a wine yeast is used. These wines usually need a little acid put into them, because they lack this essential part of the flavor. The reader need have no fear that the wine will be flavored of the lemons or oranges or whatever is used - the number used is not enough to flavor the wine. But the acid contained in them is enough to bring out other flavors.

18. Root Wines - A satisfactory ferment is more important with potato wines and wine made from ingredients containing starch, such as roots, wheat and rice, than with other wines. By this I do not mean that a satisfactory ferment is not important with fruit wines; of course it is. But it is even more important if we want wines made with starchy materials to become perfectly clear.

Many people complain that the starch boiled into the water at the beginning remains in the finished wine, and that efforts to clarify with isinglass and egg-white only make matters worse.

19. Champagne - Certain writers on wine-making (who should have known better) have concluded some of their recipes with the words: 'This will make a lovely sparkling wine.' They also call certain of their recipes 'So-and-so Champagne'. The directions they give are the same as those for making any other sort of wine; the result, therefore, cannot be a champagne unless it happens by an accident not allowed for in the recipe. What prob­ably happened is that these 'experts' once made a sparkling wine by accident, and not knowing how or why it had happened, simply attributed the efferves­cence to one of the ingredients and passed the recipe on to their public as champagne.

20. Sugar + Acid - The actual composition, in exact quantities, of any given fruit is a variable unknown; even if it could be precisely determined it would not be the same in two consecutive seasons. Soil, situation, weather, type of tree, all have something to do with it. Even fruit of the same variety, grown under apparently identical conditions, would be found upon analysis to vary in their percentages of known elements.

Commercial producers are aware of this inconsis­tency; the grapes they grow on the same vines in the same soil are not identical in two consecutive seasons.

21. Questions + Answers - Rhubarb Wine

/ am making my rhubarb wine as an ordinary wine, fer­menting it in the tub. I cannot decide whether it is ferment­ing properly: there is no froth on the surface of the brew, instead the surface looks something like drizzle on a pud­dle. Do you think it is working properly?

Working well. Not all fruit wines froth during fermen­tation, and those that do usually cease to do so after a day or so. The surface of the brew would then appear as you have described it.

Sweetening Finished Wines

My wine is perfectly clear t being nearly a year old, but it is rather too sharp. Will sweetening with sugar bring about more fermentation?

22. Own Wine - If you have a garden - or even if you have only a tiny plot of trampled-down, weed-infested soil - you can grow the fruits to make your own wine.

A plot measuring twelve feet by twelve will support three blackcurrant bushes and two gooseberry bushes, or two of each and two redcurrant bushes or some loganberry or raspberry canes. A plot twice that size or, say, thirty feet by twenty, which is really quite small, has enormous possibilities for growing each of the fruits just mentioned, and in addition rhubarb in quite large quantities.

23. Soft Fruits - Gooseberries do quite well anywhere, but they do better on an 'open* soil, by which I mean fairly gritty. Therefore it will pay to dig in some moisture-holding material such as compost and, if possible, some gravel or shingle if the soil is inclined to be heavy. A light, sandy soil will need only the addition of compost.

A generous mulch during the early growing season will be of special benefit, as will fortnightly feeding with liquid manure. Plant any time between the begin­ning of October and mid-March. During a warm spell in February is the latest I, myself, would leave the planting of gooseberries.

24. Tree Fruits - There are countless varieties of apples in general culti­vation in this country and all have their likes and dis­likes - yet all the all-round varieties seem to do well almost anywhere.

Like all fruits they like to be treated well and will reward those who remember this. I am concerned with growing apples and other fruits such as plums for wine-making; therefore there seems little point in covering the growing of these fruits in the espalier fashion or as cordons.

25. Grapes - I think it quite safe to say that more has been written about the cultivation of grapes than has - or ever will be - written about any other fruit. This is not surpris­ing, considering that the grape is probably the oldest of known fruits. Evidence that grapes have been grown here for centuries is found in certain parts of the country where careful inspection of sloping land shows remains of terraced vineyards.

26. Gardening - Little can be done this month, and much will depend on how much has been done in previous months. If the weather is mild the planting of fruit trees and bushes may be undertaken, but do this only if the weather appears likely to stay mild for a few days at least.

Look to blackcurrant bushes and remove any swollen buds and burn them.

Get in supplies of insecticides and fertilizers.

THE END