Red Wine Vinegar

Home made, even.  Good Italian balsamic vinegar is fairly easy to find these days and we’ve given these folks more than a few dollars over the past three years to have it on hand.  One of life’s simple pleasures and helps us look forward to salads instead of sighing in resignation.  But good (Italian or otherwise) red wine vinegar?  Not so easy to find.  So my wife believed the solution was to make our own. A proper vinegar crock and a starter – the “mother” – were purchased, as well some cheesecloth to allow air to pass through the open top of the crock.  The mother went in the crock, along with 2 cups of red wine and we set it under a cabinet on April 1.  On July 1, we deemed it ready after a tasting proved delicious.

Voila: something made from leftovers into something else.  We bottled most of what was in the crock (leaving the mother) and poured back in a half bottle of days-old wine from the fridge.  Another 3 months and we’ll have more.  Science, man!