Not every bottle of wine is finished. House wines get poured, and the bottle is either saved for the next day, not my favorite idea, or it can be used for cooking, or—and this is the key—it can be turned into vinegar. If you are pouring wine in a restaurant or at home and there is a bit of excess, turn it into vinegar. Sure, I understand saving the wine for the next evening, but half a glass left in a bottle is, well, a half a glass of well-oxidized wine the next day. Turn the wine into vinegar.
We started with a vinegar mother and a half a glass of wine. From there, more wine and ever-growing glass jars contained our vinegar. At first, it was nothing, a winey base with slight vinegar notes from the mother. As the alcohol was converted by the acetobacters into vinegar, we became part of the process. We began to use it early with the winey undertones; the flavor was great. When we took some vinegar, we added more wine. At first just red, but then we had leftover white and dessert wines, so they went in the jars.
We now had nurtured a half a glass of wine into an evolving vinegar. I wanted a better home and found vinegar barrels at oakbarrelwinecraft.com. I was lured in by the French oak barrels and got one to house and add to our vinegar.
One type of vinegar was not enough. The next came from a need and inspiration. We used to make maple vinegar by mixing maple syrup with sherry vinegar. Good, but now that we made vinegar, we should make a maple vinegar. We did not locate maple wine. Rather, we mixed maple syrup with white wine, rum, and our every wine vinegar as a base. The active and alive vinegar turned the rum-maple-wine combination into maple vinegar. Here we have the richness of the maple with the underlying notes of the rum with the balanced acidity from nature’s involvement. And yes, we got another barrel.
Heck, now we make vinegar; what else can we convert? Port? Yeah, ruby port. We began again with some older ruby port and a bit of our every wine vinegar. The conversion took place, and we added more port to build the base, and we bought another barrel.
Now we have run out of space; well, perhaps I can move a few things around. I have always wanted a Sauternes and Champagne vinegar.
It is not hard to make vinegar; yes, we have read a number of books to reaffirm our instincts, but in the end, nature will take its own path. So we might as well just accept that at the end of the day, a rich vinegar is better than a stale glass of wine.
One caveat: make sure your barrel is well-seasoned, especially in dry climates, otherwise, as in our kitchen, the vinegar finds cracks and crevices as the barrel’s exterior dries, and we get leaks. We actually need to keep them on sheet pans—easier to clean up; a lesson I learned the hard way. Yes, I still recommend the barrel.
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