Wearing rubber gloves, wash Tabasco peppers and cut off stems. Place peppers in blender or food chopper with 2 cups water and chop coarsely. Separately, chop or mince raisins. Put raisins in nylon straining bag and, over primary, pour chopped Tabascos in with raisins. Tie bag and leave in primary. Add remaining ingredients except for pectic enzyme and yeast. Stir well to dissolve sugar. Cover primary and set aside 12 hours. Add pectic enzyme, recover and set aside another 12 hours. Add yeast and recover primary. Stir daily for 7 days. Wearing rubber gloves, squeeze nylon bag. Transfer liquor to secondary and fit airlock.

Ferment to absolute dryness (45-60 days). Rack into clean secondary and refit airlock. Rack twice more, 30 days apart. Wait final 30 days and rack into bottles. Can use or drink immediately, but will age if you add 1/8 tsp of tannin to ingredients.

Info:

Tabasco chiles are a strongly-pungent red pepper used to make Tabasco Sauce. The small fruit are are rich in capsaicin, the compound responsible for the "heat" in chiles. Like jalapenos, poblanos and other chiles, Tabasco chiles can be made into in mildly to strongly pungent cooking or marinade wine. The "hotness" of the wine will depend on how many chiles are used to make it. The following recipe will yield one gallon of mildly hot wine which can also be sipped. To make a "hot" wine, double the number if chiles.

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