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Elderberry Champagne

Pontyberem, Carmarthenshire

Drinks

The Recipe

You will need

  • ten pounds elderberries
  • eight pounds green grapes
  • six pounds damsons
  • fourteen pounds sugar
  • three ounces yeast spread on a thick slice of toast
  • four gallons boiling water

Method

  1. Put the elderberries, the green grapes (crushed) and the damsons in a large earthen pan and cover with the boiling water. 
  2. Stir twice daily for fifteen days. 
  3. Now pour through a strainer lined with muslin. 
  4. Bring the strained liquid to the boil, remove from the heat immediately and then dissolve the sugar in it.  (The liquid should not boil after adding the sugar.) 
  5. Pour the liquid back into the earthen pan and allow to cool to blood heat before adding the yeast. 
  6. Take out the toast on the following day and allow the wine to ferment for seven days, removing surface scum daily. 
  7. Then pour it into bottles and cork loosely with rolls of paper. 
  8. The wine will continue to ferment and overflow so that it will be necessary to re-fill the bottles periodically.  (Use the contents of one bottle to re-fill the others.) 
  9. Cork securely in about four to six weeks’ time when the fermentation has subsided.

Pontyberem, Carmarthenshire.

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