156 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



cence from typhoid and other fevers, currant wine is fully equal 

 as a medicinal remedy to the best imported port wine. It is 

 also a promoter of digestion, and is a valuable remedy in dys- 

 pepsia. A bottle of currant wine once sealed up should never 

 be opened until wanted for use. The admittance of atmospheric 

 air injures both the quality and flavor, by absorbing the carbonic 

 acid gas contained in the wine. 



ELDERBERRY WINE. 



The juice of the berries of the common elder (^Sambucits Can- 

 adensis,') makes a most excellent wine. It has been in use in 

 Northern Europe for more than two centuries, and is highly 

 esteemed as a medicinal wine. The following is the English 

 method of preparation, according to Peter S. Good : — 



" Mix twelve and a half gallons of ripe elderberry juice and 

 forty-two pounds of sugar with thirty-seven and a half gallons 

 of water, that previously has had boiling in it six ounces of 

 ginger ; add nine ounces of pimento, bruised and drained off, 

 and when rather less than milk-warm, almost cold, add one pint 

 of good yeast, and let it ferment fourteen days in the barrel. 

 Then bung it close and bottle it in six months." 



COMMON METHOD OF PREPARATION. 



Take common elderberries, free from stems, bruise them and 

 express the juice. Add an equal quantity of water, and to each 

 gallon of this mixture add four pounds of white sugar. Fer- 

 ment the same way as currant wine, and bottle it. Some people 

 add one pint of bourbon whiskey to each gallon of fermented 

 wine before bottling. This gives more body, and will preserve 

 it for an indefinite space of time. Elderberry wine is a stimu- 

 lant tonic and slightly laxative. It is also an anti-scorbutic. 

 It is useful in dyspepsia and as a laxative in habitual costive- 

 ness. It also has some reputation in eruptive diseases and in 

 scrofula. The juice of apples, or common cider, can also be 

 manufactured into very pleasant and palatable wine. The 

 following is the most popular method : — 



CIDER, OR APPLE WINE. 



Take sweet and sour apples in about equal parts by measure. 

 Let them be sound, pleasant-flavored and free from rot and worm- 



