When we went to Aberystwyth in November we went to a nice Spanish restaurant. One of the highlights was that they gave us some olives and bread, and on the table were a selection of oils and vinegars for you to mix your own dressing.
It got me thinking that I’d like to try and make some vinegar of my own, so I did. I made some red wine vinegar and some Amontillado vinegar.
The red wine one was a bit difficult because it meant I had to leave some wine.
Anyway, the method is really simple, pour your wine, sherry, whatever into a wide mouthed jar and leave it uncovered. I left mine for about 6 weeks before it was anywhere near ready, but then I did do it towards the end of November. It might be quicker in August.
If you’re doing this in the winter you won’t need to worry too much about it being full of flies, if you are doing it in the summer you might want to cover it some muslin.
You can speed things up a bit if you already have some vinegar with the ‘mother’ in it. ( The mother is the thing that does all of the hard work, eating the alcohol and turning it into acetic acid. If you look closely at the photograph, you can see it floating on the surface ). Just extract the mother from your other vinegar, and add it gently to to your jar, you want it to stay on or near the surface.
and that’s it.