The vinegar baby

I had a wine tragedy recently. Yes, another bad bottle of wine. I am starting to think maybe I should go back to vodka for a while.

We had some good news and I finally decided to bust out the bottle of 1997 Williams Selyem Olivet Lane Pinot Noir I picked up a year or two ago. It was bad. The cork had leaked (I was heartbroken when I got the foil off and saw the ooze) and it was oxidized/spoiled. It wasn't undrinkable, but it wasn't good, and it was extra sad because there was a tiny hint of what the wine would have been like if it wasn't ruined. And this time I couldn't run back to the store and return it (who knows, maybe I stored it poorly).

Anyway, what to do? I didn't want to pour it out since that seemed too tragic, so I decided it was finally time to try to make vinegar, something I have been thinking about for a while, and something probably every serious and frugal wine drinker has at least considered. I mean, who doesn't cringe a little, tossing out the last bit of that really good bottle because it's been a few days and you never finished it? I know you can't just sit the bottle out on the counter and hope for the best (well, you can, but it probably won't work out) but I wasn't sure what exactly I had to do. So I did some research and read about vinegar mothers (seemingly the liquid kin to sourdough starters) and you know, you can make home vinegar-making very difficult if you want to, looking at some sites out there and what they tell you to do. And come on, now, it just doesn't seem like it needs to be THAT hard. It's vinegar!

Anyway, I found the Vinegar Man. He's funny and no nonsense and provided me a way to get some vinegar started without mail ordering a mother or scouring stores for it (I didn't want the wine to sit around for a long time while I did that).

I should probably get a better container (I might look into a crock or sun tea type container, as I read that they work well) since I have a pitcher and a carafe set up right now and that isn't the best thing. But what I did was easy:

- I picked up a bottle of unpasteurized, raw vinegar at the local Yuppie organic food super chain store (this has the mother of vinegar in it)
- Diluted the wine to about 7 percent (the wine was 15 percent, so that was easy)
- Mixed the two liquids together and stuck them in glass containers (you do not want metal or plastic, and you want a fair amount of air to get to the surface, so choose wisely)
- Put cheesecloth over them so they could get air (this is important) but no bugs could get in (also pretty important) and rubberbanded it down
- Stuck the containers in a cabinet in a fairly room-temperature-but-on-the-warm-side place that is dark (also important)

Now I wait. I think it will be about two months before anything good happens or is done happening. Supposedly the mother will form on top of the vinegar (it's a slimy looking mass) and then fall to the bottom. In about two months I can remove the mother, either toss it or keep it around to give to friends (whee!) and then bottle the vinegar (I can home-pasteurize it or not). I have read that aging the bottled vinegar a few months can mellow it out a little, too. I guess in about 9 months I will have some vinegar, should all go well. It's kind of like a baby!

In the meantime, I am wondering if my kitchen will start reeking of vinegar in a few days.

I can keep some of the raw vinegar around to do this all over again, too. I guess I should start looking for recipes using a lot of vinegar, or plan on giving some away...

Comments

[Leeann]

Will raw vinegar help my chirrhosis of my liver?