White wine, crimson wine, Champagne, and even sherry: grocery store cabinets are crammed with vinegar varieties that boast wine-related names. However the connection between wine and vinegar hasn’t all the time been crystal clear.
One fantasy that’s typically perpetuated is that when a bottle of wine will get too previous or goes unhealthy, it inevitably turns into vinegar. Out there for previous and uncommon wines, one may hear an costly wine of a sure age known as “thousand-dollar vinegar” or within the case of one of the vital costly wines ever bought “The Billionaire’s Vinegar” — the title of a e book a couple of rip-off involving among the rarest bottles of wine bought at public sale.
So ought to wine lovers and collectors be anxious about previous bottles turning into salad dressing of their cellars? Or if a house chef leaves some leftover Chianti out for a couple of days, will they be rewarded with a contemporary crimson wine vinegar? The reply isn’t so easy.
Do not Miss A Drop
Get the most recent in beer, wine, and cocktail tradition despatched straight to your inbox.
Beginning initially, each merchandise are constructed from grapes. First, the fruit undergoes alcoholic fermentation, the place yeast turns the grape sugars into alcohol, making wine. Vinegar takes the method a step additional, the place acetobacter micro organism convert the alcohol into acetic acid, which supplies vinegar its attribute sharp odors and flavors. (That is additionally why vinegar isn’t alcoholic.)
In vinegar manufacturing, to reliably get an analogous end result each time, the micro organism is launched into the wine to spark this conversion course of. Folks can use a “vinegar mom,” which accommodates cellulose, yeast, and acetic acid micro organism to assist nudge the fermentation in the correct course, much like how a “SCOBY” is utilized in kombucha manufacturing.
With out the vinegar mom, the wine doesn’t all the time essentially flip into vinegar by itself. Acetobacter is taken into account a spoilage micro organism, and in trendy wine manufacturing, many winemakers select to wonderful, filter, or add sulfites to wine to assist lower the danger of micro organism stepping into the bottle and turning the wine bitter.
Due to this fact, it’s unlikely that the coveted bottles tucked away in a collector’s cellar are turning to vinegar proper now, but it surely’s not unparalleled. If the spoilage micro organism and oxygen someway get into the bottle — possible via an previous, dried-up cork — then that prized Bordeaux can certainly flip to one thing resembling vinegar.
When it comes all the way down to it, although, vinegar is often produced in a really intentional method with particular micro organism, so chances are high low {that a} wine lover will by accident make vinegar by leaving a wine out for too lengthy or getting old a bottle previous its prime.
If a wine does flip bitter unintentionally, it’s not essentially unsafe to cook dinner with, however shall be disagreeable to sip. By which case, it could be finest to achieve for one more bottle. Because the previous adage suggests, “In the event you wouldn’t drink it, don’t cook dinner with it.”
