Chapter 6. Low Alcohol Wine For The Ladies

Preserved, Sweet or Dry Wines of Low Alcohol Content

It is mostly men who want their wines to be knock-out drops and usually they take care to get them as strong as possible. But a high percentage of alcohol is not everything. Many indeed, I would say most continental wines are in the region of eight to eleven per cent of alcohol. Ours, made with the recipes in this book, will be a good deal stronger than this as has already been explained. It is the ladies who like the milder-flavored, low alcohol wine, dry to medium-dry or medium-dry to sweet wines, so let me explain how any recipe here may be quite easily turned into a 'wine for the ladies'.

Mentioned in earlier chapters is the fact that a good percentage of alcohol ensures that wines keep well, and that the lower-alcohol wines those under twelve per cent might begin fermenting again at any time. This is because a stray yeast spore, either left in the wine or one reaching it at some later stage, will begin to reproduce and live on any sugar present. Only the very driest of low alcohol wines will keep and these must be so dry that no unfermented sugar remains at all.

However, not everybody likes bone-dry wines; most people prefer them medium dry to medium sweet or even sweet.

The wines made with the recipes in this book will keep well provided the maximum alcohol has been reached, and if all directions have been followed this will have been achieved. They will keep because they contain enough alcohol to destroy any yeast or bacteria that may reach them.

Our aim when making low alcohol wines is to add just enough sugar to make the amount of alcohol required and to allow the wine to ferment right out, and this it will do of its own accord. The wine will be dry if less than two and a quarter pounds of sugar are used for one gallon.

Now take a look at the short table on page 83. This shows the amount of sugar needed to produce the amount of alcohol required in one gallon of wine; if two gallons are being made the amount of sugar required would have to be doubled.

Let us suppose we have decided on making a wine of ten per cent of alcohol; the amount of sugar to add is approximately one pound fourteen ounces per gallon.

Very well then, take any recipe in this book (but not those containing dried fruit as these contain quite a lot of sugar) and instead of using the amount of sugar given in that recipe, use one pound and fourteen ounces instead.

As already mentioned, the resulting wine will be bone dry too dry even for those fond of the drier wines. To reduce this dryness we may sweeten to taste either by adding dissolved invert sugar (which dissolves quite readily) or by dissolving household sugar in some of the wine in the following manner. Care must be taken here to ensure that the wine does not come- into contact with metals. One pint of wine from one gallon will do. Put this into a china jug or similar vessel and stand this in a saucepan of water. Add, say, one teaspoonful of sugar for each bottle (one gallon, six bottles) and warm the water until the sugar in the wine is dissolved. Mix this with the bulk and sample. If this is not quite sweet enough, you will know that the process may be repeated. If you are using invert sugar, the sugar itself may be dissolved in an enamel saucepan and the resulting syrup stirred into the wine.

Very well, we now have a low-alcohol wine with sugar in it. To prevent it fermenting at some later date we may preserve it without harming it in any way.

Here again, Campden tablets play their part, but if the wine is crystal clear, Campden tablets might cloud it slightly. This should settle out, but it would mean that re-bottling might be necessary when this had happened. It is better therefore to use four grains of potassium metabisul-phite in place of one Campden tablet. This should be enough to preserve one gallon of wine.

Crush the bisulphate crystals, and dissolve them in a little warmed wine and stir this into the bulk immediately after sweetening. Make sure the crystals are quite dissolved. I have written that one Campden tablet (or four grains of bisulphite crystals) should preserve a gallon of wine and so it should, but under exceptional circumstances it might not. One more tablet (or four more grains of bisulphate crystals) may be added without harmful effects, except that it might give just a hint of flavor to the most delicately flavored wines though it will not affect those with a good all-round flavor. Fortunately, there is a simple test that we may carry out to decide whether a second tablet is needed or not.

First, pour a little of the treated wine into a wine-glass and bung down the remainder. Cover the glass with a small piece of cloth and leave in a warm room (not a hot place), overnight or for eight to twelve hours. Note carefully the color when setting it out and again the following morning (or compare this sample with a sample freshly drawn from the bulk). If darkening of the sample left overnight has occurred, then an extra tablet is needed. If darkening has not occurred, one tablet (four grains metabisulphite) has done the job, and you have a low alcohol wine of required dryness or sweetness that will keep well.

Up to 450 parts SO2 are allowed by law in 1,000,000 parts wine, and this is represented by approximately eight Campden tablets (or thirty-two grains potassium metabisulphite). Two tablets (eight grains) represent just over one hundred parts per million; so it will be seen that we are not, after all, using very much.

Dry wines finish fermenting sooner than wines of a higher alcoholic content because there is less sugar to be fermented out.

This preserving of wines may be carried out with all wines if you wish, whether they be high-alcohol wines or not.

The above figures refer to the use of household sugar.

If invert sugar is being used in making low alcohol wine, it must be borne in mind that this contains some moisture, so that for every pound of household sugar one must use one and a quarter pounds of invert sugar. So that mistakes do not occur, I have included the amounts of each sugar to use so that you may choose for yourself which to use and know how much of either not both.

Invert sugar is usually supplied in tins containing seven pounds or in blocks by whatever weight is ordered. If weighing this proves awkward, dissolve it and measure it by the pint, bearing in mind that one pint represents two pounds of sugar.