White Wine Vinegar
Homemade white wine vinegar has always escaped my grasp.
For almost four years, I've been making red wine vinegar. Every few months, I pull a new batch of ruby red, fruity and complex vinegar — better than any commercial product I've had — from the squat oak barrel on our mantel and ladle it gently through cheesecloth into green, 375 ml bottles.
Some people coddle their sourdough starters: I pamper my vinegar. Every few days for the last few years, I have sniffed at my barrel, plunging my nose into the fumes of spoiling wine to gauge the liquid inside. I have sipped vinegar straight from a spoon to evaluate it, describe it, and critique it. I have bought wine solely to replenish my barrel when I feared that bottling would drain too much. I have nurtured my vinegar back to health after it has strayed too far from the acetic acid path. I have read everything I can about this ingredient, digging into folklore, chemical pathways, and ideal conditions for the transforming bacteria. When I tell my wine students that Sherry is made similarly to true balsamic vinegar, I'm always surprised that they don't get the analogy.
I know my vinegar.
But white wine is a tricky beast. Without red wine's protective tannins, it should spoil faster. Wine is, after all, simply one point on the path to vinegar. Winemakers compensate for that defenselessness, however, by adding sulfur dioxide, which inhibits the decline to vinegar. Good for the wine drinker; bad for the vinegar maker.
Each time I've started a batch — and I've probably tried three or four times — it's failed. It goes flat. The aroma dies. Mold forms.
But I knew it was possible. The guys at Oak Barrel, Berkeley's mecca for winemakers, brewers, and vinegar makers, talk as if there is nothing to it. "Oh, yeah, I always have a batch going," one of them said to me. I chat these sages up, trying to divine from their comments the one, obvious thing they're neglecting to tell me. The thing that prevents a bottle of my own white wine vinegar from gracing my pantry.
I decided to try again, armed with years of vinegar experience and research. I started with a bottle of low-sulfite Viognier. I diluted it to 10 percent alcohol, about the maximum the bacteria can handle. I poured it into a glass jar, enshrouding my makeshift crock with a bag to protect the liquid from light damage. I added starter culture from Oak Barrel, not trusting the wine's ability to go to vinegar itself. I whisked it vigorously every day, providing oxygen to the hungry bacteria.
I checked it a few times each day. Sometimes, after its daily whisking, I would get a sense of the vinegar within, a clean scent of acetic acid and wine. But most of the time, it smelled of Parmiggiano cheese and hazelnuts, the smells of oxidation, with mere hints of acetic acid and ethyl acetate.
Two months or so into its production, I sniffed the jar. With no whisking at all, it had the clean vinegar aroma I had only glimpsed before. I tasted it. Definitely white wine vinegar, though still raw and coarse without its six months of bottle age. I let out a little yell, and told Melissa. I tweeted it. I couldn't contain my excitement as I carefully drew off 375 ml and brought it downstairs to mellow.
I have already come up with 2 liters of use for my 375 ml. I want to infuse one bottle with tarragon and other herbs. I want to infuse another with pomegranate. I want to use some to start cider vinegar. Maybe some malt vinegar as well. Red wine vinegar would start those, but it would also tint the liquid.
But vinegar-making has taught me patience. I will try the bottle in March and see how it's developed. I've added more diluted white wine, with normal sulfite levels, to my crock. I whisk it daily. I sniff it daily. It's taken me so long to produce one bottle, I don't trust I'll get a second one.
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