Tomato Wine

“If the Tomato be as highly medicinal as it has been represented, it may be anticipated that this wine will find favor with the public.” – Milwaukee Sentinal, June 1840

Interspersed with the shrubs, the cherry bounce, eggnog and Fish House Punch in 19th-century Maryland cookbooks are some of the most intriguing and intimidating recipes: for wines and beers.

Brewing was a part of everyday household management, hardly considered any more frivolous than bread. (And the two processes were often intertwined.)

Beer appeared in the first American cookbook, “American Cookery”, by Amelia Simmons in 1796. Cider was fairly easy to make from fruits like apples and pears. Wine was a little more complicated.

European grapes didn’t always fare so well in America, and the native ones didn’t always make wine that was considered palatable. (Don’t worry – we’ll revisit that topic later this summer…)

In an 1790, the Maryland Gazette reported that a New Jersey man, Joseph Cooper, Esq., could make the elusive “excellent American wine” from honey and cider. Cooper believed that “by using the clean honey instead of the comb… such an improvement might be made as would enable the citizens of the United States to supply themselves with a truly federal and wholesome wine.”

It was the increased availability of sugar in the 1800′s that really fueled a century of creative wine brewing.

According to Waverley Root and Richard De Rochemont in “Eating in America,” “every housewife knew how to make ‘weed wines’ fermented from “any product of field or garden” – dandelion, elderflower, spinach, tomato, mint, “and of course berries.”

“Early American Beverages,” by John Hull Brown reprinted recipes for a staggering variety of wines that could be found in 19th-century America, including apricot, birch, egg, ginger, lemon, sage, turnip and walnut leaf.

Tomatoes were really taking off in popularity around this time. Whether or not colonists or Europeans had previously suspected tomatoes of being poisonous, in the early 1800′s, the opposite was true.

The idea of tomatoes being a panacea is attributed to a Dr. John Cook Bennett, who publicized tomatoes as a cure for dyspepsia, Cholera, and liver problems among other things. Bennett promoted recipes for tomato pickles, sauces, and ketchup. Manufacturers of cure-all pills and tonics capitalized on the craze by peddling tomato extract pills (which may or may not have contained any trace of tomatoes.)

Newspaper advertisements in the 1830s and 1840s offered a variety of brands of tomato pills guaranteed to cure “all diseases of the blood.”

Tomato wine experienced a surge in popularity in tandem with this. The recipe was popularized in the widely circulated “Dr. Chase’s Recipes” publication alongside fruit wines, remedies, animal husbandry and other information. Tomato wine appeared in regional newspapers as well – including the Baltimore Sun in 1856. Some recipes promised to “retain the well-known properties of the fruit.” Others claimed the resulting drink resembled Champagne or Madeira.

In 1865, “The American Agriculturalist” had had enough. In a scathing and humorous editorial, they praised the tomato as food while dismissing the medicinal claims:

“The following precious nonsense is going the rounds of the agricultural and other papers: ’ A good medical authority ascribes to the tomato… important medical qualifications… the tomato is one of the most powerful aperients of the liver and other organs… it is one of the most effective and the least harmful medical agents known… a chemical extract will be obtained from it that will supersede the use of calomel in the cure of diseases”…

This we regard as.. a libel upon our good friend the tomato. No ‘good medical authority’ ever wrote himself down such a stupid as to accuse the tomato-vine of being an apothecary’s shop… Just think of what a condition our livers must be in at the close of tomato season, after being so powerfully ‘aperiented’ to say nothing of the ‘other organs.’ The whole thing savors of the most arrogant quackery.

The tomato extract dodge was tried years ago, and we had “Tomato pills, will cure all ills,” as the quack epidemic for its day. Let no lover of the delicious tomato be deterred from enjoying it for fear of taking anything bearing the slightest resemblance to calomel or any other medicine, but eat as many as he likes without thinking of his liver or the doctor.“ – The American Agriculturist, Volume 24, 1865

In the chapter of “Southern Provisions” about sugar, David Shields discussed the historic variety of American wines. “Since the 1930′s, the superiority of wine made from Vitis Vinifera grapes has been maintained so insistently in culinary circles that the splendors of tomato wine, rhubarb wine, and strawberry wine have been discounted.”

It is true that when word got out about my tomato winemaking venture to friends-of-friends in Napa, eyebrows were raised. I think it’s a little unfair to hold this endeavor as a litmus test to whether tomato wine is worthy of revival. My brewing experience before this was limited to ginger ale, after all.

Furthermore, I’m not the biggest fan of white wine – which is tomato wine’s closest comparison point. I drank a glass and enjoyed it as much as any other white wine. Then I promptly introduced the vinegar mother.

In addition to the lost wines, Shields lamented “we have lost not only the beverages, but a world of early pickles that employed vinegar made from fruit and berry wines.” So it’s not all a lost cause.

There is some tomato wine available on the market today. For that matter, there are tomato pills available on the market today. If you have cholera or liver problems, you should probably just stick to water.

Recipe:

I used the above recipe from “Queen of the Kitchen” by M.L. Tyson as a starting point, and referred to the Tomato Wine Tutorial on leaf.tv for reference. I think I also asked some questions of the helpful people at Nepenthe and Maryland Homebrew as well.

Additional thanks goes to One Straw Farm for supplying me the tomatoes!