Off bottles of wine as vinegar?

[Alex Parker]

Hi forum!

I found a couple of sampler bottles of wine from 2000. Looking at them their VERY off (sediment on the bottle of the bottle, neck sludged up..) I was wondering if I could use these somehow, and vinegar was the first thing to jump into my head. I really dont want to have to bin them, but if I have no other choice, thats what I will do.

What do you think??

Alex

[Jaymes]

Add a little vinegar to them and they'll completely turn. Great for salads, etc.

[rotuts]

filter and place in a clean jug of some sort and wait and see! there will be plenty of bacteria left if you dont to a 100 % filtering job.

let us know!

[Syzygies]

I make vinegar in a beer-brewing carboy, using ends of bottles and good bottles that are nevertheless not exactly what I'm looking for to drink.

I would no more make vinegar from "off" wine than I'd make sausage from rotten meat. In both cases one wants the friendlies to win the war, for which they need a decisive head start. Unless one is absolutely positive that the way in which the wine has gone "off" is precisely that it has started naturally to turn into magnificent vinegar, throw it out! Usually, something else is wrong instead.

There are kits to train people in the wine trade how to distinguish ways in which wine has gone off. Like the seafood inspector who now tastes every piece of shrimp starting to go off, it would probably be a curse to actually learn to identify these tastes. Easier to be conservative.

[liuzhou]

I would no more make vinegar from "off" wine than I'd make sausage from rotten meat. In both cases one wants the friendlies to win the war, for which they need a decisive head start. Unless one is absolutely positive that the way in which the wine has gone "off" is precisely that it has started naturally to turn into magnificent vinegar, throw it out! Usually, something else is wrong instead.

Absolutely agree!

[Jaymes]

Well, Alex, strain them and smell/taste them. If your wine is "off" because it's already turning to vinegar, which is what has usually happened to me when I say it's gone "off," then, as I say, add about a teaspoon or so of vinegar to it and wait for it to completely turn. What have you wasted? A teaspoon of vinegar?

You can always taste it again after several weeks. If it tastes good, you've got a nice wine vinegar to use. If it tastes rotten, then bin it. Nobody is suggesting that you give crappy-tasting vinegar to your guests or to yourself.

Seriously, what's the risk here? Toss it now or waste a tsp of vinegar and toss it later?

To me, it's a no-brainer.

But hey, to each his own.

[OliverB]

don't you need a "mother" to make vinegar? That slimy thing? I guess you can get some going by just leaving a bottle open and having some luck, but adding a tsp of vinegar, does that work?

I tried turning a bottle we didn't like into vinegar, after weeks of nothing happening I threw it out, but I'll try again once I have some vinegar with a mother in it.

[Jason Perlow]

Actually, today we did the reverse.

When opening a an old bottle of balsamic vinegar today, the cork crumbled. So we decanted the vinegar into a new bottle with a fresh cork and what was left over was a big glop of mother.

We had some wine from thanksgiving sitting in the fridge (a drinkable chardonnay) so we put that into new vinegar bottles and added some of the mother to each, in a cool part of our pantry with the tops open. I guess we'll find out in a few weeks if those bottles turn into vinegar.

[Ashen]

you can often find mother in good unfiltered apple cider vinegar. I believe Bragg brand even advertises that it contains mother...

Depending on if and how much sulfur dioxide has been added to a wine it may take longer than expected to turn.

[Syzygies]

When opening a an old bottle of balsamic vinegar today

My understanding is that balsamic vinegar is different from regular vinegar. Not as different as sauerkraut is from beer, but different.

I know Paul Bertolli has made balsamic vinegar at home. I wandered into a specialized shop in Itaiy and asked about making balsamic vinegar at home, They were genuinely nice, but they didn't stop laughing for fifteen minutes.

[Jason Perlow]

I don't expect it to turn into balsamic vinegar, but I would think the mother would turn the wine into a decent white wine vinegar. We'll see. At the very least its an interesting science experiment.

Edited January 4, 2013 by Jason Perlow (log)

[Syzygies]

Here's the most detailed description of balsamic vinegar bacteria I could find:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18177968

For traditional balsamic vinegar, significative phenotypical traits of acetic acid bacteria have been highlighted. Basic traits are: ethanol preferred and efficient oxidation, fast rate of acetic acid production, tolerance to high concentration of acetic acid, no overoxidation and low pH resistance. Specific traits are tolerance to high sugar concentration and to a wide temperature range. Gluconacetobacter europaeus and Acetobacter malorum strains can be evaluated to develop selected starter cultures since they show one or more suitable characters.

In other words, acetic acid bacteria for conventional vinegar are adapted to mostly alcohol, while for balsamic vinegar they're adapted to mostly sugar. Yet, the same family of bugs, so your mother should work, eventually.

[OliverB]

that should be interesting, never would expect a mother in balsamic! My uncle (Italian in Italy) used to make his own once the kids moved out, had a row of kegs in the attic. Turned out really good, but crazy expensive, he bought some kegs that were over 100 years old to use. (he has a lot more money than I can ever dream of, LOL)

Now his daughter has a full aceteria and makes a variety of balsamic vinegars, from simple to crazy expensive in tiny bottles. I have yet to visit it, a bit far from California, but I've seen pictures and she won several awards (also married a guy with even more money so she could afford to set this up with the best of everything). We have some of her balsamic, it's thick and sweet and amazing.

So, yes, you can make it at home, but you need a row of kegs, a good amount of money, and time. The kegs get smaller down the row, the smallest gets emptied by half or something like that, that's what you use or sell, then you fill it again from the next larger one and so on, until you reach the first and largest one which you fill with fresh must or what it is. Balsamic has an interesting history too, fun stuff to explore.

But without the row of kegs you won't get anywhere. Some just use oak I think, the best ones use different wood kegs for each year's keg. I'll never forget the smell in my uncle's attic. Or in his basement, where the whole parma hams were hanging and large pieces of the best parmesan I've ever eaten anywhere. Regio Emilia, mi amore :-)