What to do with unfinished bottles of wine

My first recommendation is to finish the wine, but barring that outcome, here’s a simple, money-saving, fun, and delicious alternative to drinking fading bottles ex-fridge, or just dumping partial bottles down the sink: MAKE YOUR OWN VINEGAR!

It’s really easy. First, find the right container. The very best vessel will be fairly large (1 gallon/4 liters or so should suffice) opaque, made of either a non-reactive material like porcelain or glass, or of wood with a cover (preferably with a small hole in it’s top), and a spigot at the bottom (this allows you to easily draw off the finished vinegar). Finding this EXACT type of container can be difficult, so if you can’t, just be sure that the size and the material are squared away.

Here’s the procedure: Take a walnut-sized chunk of fresh, good quality crustless bread (no bread from plastic bags made in factories need apply!) and drop it in the (CLEAN!) container. Pour in wine. Cover the container with some type of material that will allow air to (slowly) pass through, but still reamain impermiable enough to prevent dust, etc. from falling into the container. The best material for this is a coarse muslin or a long length of cheesecloth tripled or quadrupled up. Tightly secure the cloth at the rim with a string or rubber band. Place the container in a dark, cool (NOT cold - this wil inhibit the formation of the vinegar, and NOT hot either - this could cause bacteria or mold to form) place like the bottom of a pantry or a basement closet. In about 2 to 3 weeks, a gelatinous mass called the “mother” will form (it looks very similar to an amorphous chunk of canned cranberry sauce, if the wine was red, of course).

This mother is essentially a live yeast culture. Some think that this looks (and feels!) quite nasty, but when you taste the vinegar, you wont care! Once the mother is formed, you can cut some small pieces off of the main culture, and just drop them into other containers, add fresh (or older) wine, and you will have DELICIOUS vinegar with 48-72 hours!

So what’s going on here? It’s very simple really. There are, within good quality breads, yeast cells that are still active. When these live yeast cells come into contact with the water+sugars in the wine, they are reactivated, and begin to feed on the bread and the sugars and the alcohol in the wine, eventually turning them into acetic acid.

Now trust me when I tell you, this will be THE BEST VINEGAR YOU’VE EVER TASTED: pleasantly acidic, FRUITY and COMPLEX. Let’s face it, the base wines used to make even expensive “gourmet” vinegars are far inferior to what most of us drink on a daily basis, so the results you will get will be far superior to nearly every commercially available vinegar. And while making your own vinegar isn’t “free”, it’s a hell of a lot better than drinking souring wine or worse yet, just throwing money down the drain.

A FEW OF TIPS:

- Be sure that, once the mother has formed, and you’ve got a container full of fully vinegarized (is that a word?!) wine, that you draw off into a cruet a quantity of vinegar that you may need before you add any more wine. While it will only take 2 or 3 days to acetify the fresh wine, during this time, there will be alcohol in the mix. Obviously, consuming this part vinegar/part wine mixture is harmless, but it just doesn’t taste very good.

- NEVER used “corked” wine to make vinegar! The vinegar will taste as “corky” as the wine!

- In making vinegar you can freely mix red and white wines in the same container with no ill effects, but with just one extra container, you can make separate red and white vinegars, and if you’re feeling more ambitious, and have the space, you can even make “varietal” vinegars: a Sangiovese, a Cabernet Franc, a Chardonnay, a Viura, etc. vinegar…

- In the first two to three week stage, peek into the container from time to time, and sniff and visually examine the surface of the vinegar - if it smells REALLY musty, you’ve gotten a mold infection. Toss this batch out, clean the container, and start again.

- At times, the surface of the liquid in the container may contain some whitish, powdery matter. To insure complete and successful acetification, skim this stuff off from time to time.

HAPPY VINEGARIZATION TO ONE AND ALL!

TOM CIOCCO