Birk Wine

Juice from the birch tree, sugar, raisins, almonds, crude tartar. To every gallon of juice from the birch tree, three pounds of sugar, one pound of raisins, half an ounce of crude tartar, and one ounce of almonds are allowed; the juice, sugar, and raisins are to be boiled twenty minutes, and then put into a tub, together with the tartar; and when it has fermented some days, it is to be strained, and put into the cask, and also the almonds, which must be tied in a muslin bag. The fermentation having ceased, the almonds are to be withdrawn, and the cask bunged up, to stand about five months, when it may be fined and bottled. Keep in a cool cellar. Set the bottles upright or they will fly.

About the end of March, or later if the spring is backward, bore a hole in a tree and put in a faucet, and it will run for two or three days together without hurting the tree; then put in a pin to stop it, and the next year you may draw as much from the same hole. Pennant, writing in 1769, tells us that, in the Aberdeenshire Highlands, the birch, which grows plentifully in this district, was applicable to a great variety of purposes: for all implements of husbandry, for the roofing of houses, and fuel; whilst with its bark leather was tanned, and " quantities of excellent wine are extracted from the live tree by tapping ".

Return To Scots Beverages