Tinto de verano sorbet
Red wine and lemonade as a sorbet: fresh, light and not remotely cloying, with the fruit note of the wine and the clean lemon finish. An August terrace in a scoop.
Alcohol does not freeze: every degree you leave in pushes the freezing point further down. That is why the part going into the base is reduced, and even so this is one of the softest sorbets in the house.
Ingredients
For 1 kgTick each ingredient as you get it ready.
Need to adjust the formula?
Step by step
9 steps · follow the order for the best result
Chef's notes
- ·Wine split in two: part of it reduced into the base and the rest raw at around 20 °C, on the way down.
- ·Do not skip the cold ageing: it hydrates proteins and stabiliser and clearly improves the texture.
- ·The serving temperature depends on your recipe: if you formulate to a softer PAC than your freezer (say -11 °C with the chest at -18 °C), temper it for 5–10 min before serving; if the PAC matches your freezer, it can be eaten straight out.
- ·Why formulate at -11 and not at -18 °C: even though your freezer sits at -18 °C, formulating at -11 makes the ice cream tastes better — at -18 it is so cold that the taste buds barely pick up the flavour and the fat is slow to melt in the mouth. And keeps better: ice cream formulated at -11 and kept at -18 has less free water, suffers less from Ostwald ripening (ice crystals joining and growing) and keeps its creaminess longer.
- ·Keep your own notes: write down the POD and PAC that work best with your machine.
The texture
spot on
Soft and loose, somewhere between a granita and a sorbet: the wine's alcohol won't let it firm up, which is why alcoholic and de-alcoholised wine are mixed, so as not to overdo it. The fizz is lost, but the lemon and the wine come through whole.
Everything about this tinto de verano sorbet
The prep step is the heart of the recipe: part of the tinto de verano over gentle heat, between 50 and 55 °C, until it stops smelling of alcohol. That gives the reduction that acts as the base, with nothing left to get in the way of freezing.
The rest goes in as it is, added on the way down when the mix is around 20 °C. That is the split: the larger half goes in raw to keep the wine and lemon aroma, and the cooked part is the one that stands the heat of pasteurisation.
Even so the PAC sits well below the usual, because some alcohol remains and because of the sugars it carries, 21 DE glucose and sucrose. The inulin is there precisely to hold it up: it is fibre, it adds solids and gives body without bringing either sweetness or more antifreeze.
The ingredients and what each does
The tinto de verano brings the flavour and almost all the water. Part of it is heated first to evaporate the alcohol and the rest goes in cold, at full strength: the alcohol that remains keeps the sorbet soft without stopping it from freezing. Sucrose sets the sweetness and the hardness at serving temperature. Glucose adds body and barely sweetens. Inulin adds solids with almost no sweetness, the job milk would do in an ice cream. The stabiliser holds the free water and stops crystals forming in the freezer.
Technique and controlling the numbers
Adjusting the POD (sweetening power) and the PAC (antifreezing power, given as a target temperature) lets you match sweetness and hardness to your taste and your machine. With the selectors in the side bar the formula recalculates itself and you will see how the amount of each ingredient changes.
Storage and common mistakes
Store at -18 °C in an airtight container and avoid freeze-thaw cycles. The commonest faults are not ageing it enough, too much sugar so it never freezes properly, and over-churning, which whips in too much air and wrecks the texture.
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