Cuturing Vinegar

What do you do with a partial bottle of that nice red wine you had with dinner a few nights ago and forgot to finish? If I uncork a bottle of wine for cooking and drinking, chances are in my house that even if a vacuum seal topper is used to preserve it, the wine will be too oxidized before I want another glass, making me hesitant to open a bottle unless there are friends around to share.

Here is a solution. I'd been intrigued with the thought of making my own vinegar since hearing an episode of Good Food with a segment on reusing wine. When a midsummer bonfire left me with too many partial bottles, I decided it was time to start an experiment.

You can buy fancy vinegar-making kits online that come with small oak casks and sell for $150, but what you really need is a nonreactive vessel and some vinegar culture. A spigot at the bottom is recommended to draw off finished vinegar, because often a thick, gloppy layer of "mother" culture develops on the top. Many folks use nice crocks or other pottery vessels, such as a ceramic water dispenser for around $50. I thought an economic alternative would be a glass sun tea container I bought at the hardware store for $6. For the vinegar culture, if you have a friend with a culture, you can take a piece of their mother culture. I found a red wine vinegar culture at Oak Barrel Winecraft in Berkeley for $12.

Vinegars can be made from nearly any sugar-containing solution. Yeasts, from the air or introduced by the maker, convert sugars to ethanol, in the familiar fermentation process utilized to make alcoholic drinks. A genus of microbes known as Acetobacter in the presence of oxygen convert the ethanol to acetic acid and other organic acids, which give vinegar its distinctive flavor. Winemakers and brewers consider Acetobacter a contaminant and do everything in their power to stamp it out. It produces cloudiness and gives and "off" flavor to alcoholic drinks. You can imagine an Acetobactor outbreak converting an entire cellar of wine to vinegar. But to make vinegar from an alcohol solution, such as wine, the fermentation step is skipped, and an Acetobacter culture from the air encouraged to develop.

The Household Cyclopedia of General Information, published in 1881, encourages all households to procure two barrels for vinegar making. The first is to be placed in a sunny spot, the bung covered with a piece of slate, and a small tap installed at the bottom of the barrel. After several months of culturing the finished vinegar should be drawn off and stored in the second barel in the cellar, with a pint of spirits added for preservation.

For my vinegar experiment, I sterilized the jar, then mixed the wine, culture, and a bit of water as directed. The opening was covered by a layer of cheesecloth to keep out the vinegar flies but allow in the necessary oxygen and the lid was screwed into place. The vinegar culture has been sitting quiescently on a shelf in my storage closet for almost two months now. In a month I'll bottle the vinegar and then age it for a few more months. If you'd like a bit of culture to start your own, let me know.