Hannah Woolley's homemade spirits

My blog has been rather neglected over the last couple of months. Sadly, the pressures of MA life have just meant that it has had to sit gathering dust for a little while. However, that is about to change! I have a couple of weeks off before my second semester starts, so I'm looking forward to getting lots of blogging done from the comfort of my sofa!

I thought I'd kick things off today with a topic that has probably been quite close to the hearts (or livers) of all Loughborough English and Drama students and staff in recent days: alcohol. The former, due to celebratory antics as coursework deadlines pass, and the latter, as an aid to all the marking we have inflicted on them!

Now, we're all quite used to popping down to the supermarket to pick up a bottle of wine for a Friday or Saturday night, and having a dazzling array of price ranges to choose from. But what options were available for our seventeenth-century ancestors? Hannah Woolley has some ingenious homemade suggestions in The Accomplish'd Lady's Delight.

To Make Artificial Claret:

Take six gallons of water, two gallons of the best Syder, put thereto eight pound of the best Malaga raisins bruised in a Morter, let them stand close covered in a warm place the space of a fortnight, every two days stirring them well together; then press out the Raisins and put the liquor into the sid Vessel again, to which add a quart of the juice of Ras-berries, and a pint of the juice of black Cherries; cover this liquor with bread spread thick with strong Mustard, the Mustardseed being downward, and so let it work by the fire side three or four days, then turn it up and let it stand a week, and then bottle it up, and it will tast as quick as bottle Beer and become a very pleasant drink, and indeed far better and wholsomer then our common Claret (pp. 38-39).

To Make Black-Cherry Wine:

Take a Gallon of the juice of Black-Cherries, keep it in a Vessel close stopped, till it begin to work, then filter it, and an Ounce of Sugar being added to every Pint, and a Gallon of White-Wine, and so keep it close stopped for Use (pp. 81-82).

'To Make Syder:

Take a Peck of Apples and slice them, and boyl them in a Barrel of Water, till the third part be wasted; then cool your water as you do for Wort, and when it is cold, you must pour the water upon three Measures of grown Apples. Then draw sorth the Water at a Tap three or four times a day, for three days together. Then press out the Liquor, and Tun it up; when it hath done working, stop it up close (p. 90). 

Unfortunately, Woolley offers no information on alcohol percentages, so it's perhaps best to air on the side of caution when attempting to make these concoctions at home!

Image courtesy of foodsofengland.co.uk

References:

Hannah Woolley, The Accomplish'd Lady's Delight (London: B. Harris, 1675), in EEBO.