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Meet Traute Klein,
AKA biogardener.

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Turning Wine into Vinegar

by Traute Klein, AKA biogardener

Turn your wine-making disasters into the best wine vinegar, better than any which would be commercially available.

Water into Wine?

"You appear to be a bit confused," you tell me. "You are supposed to be turning water into wine." After all, that is what Jesus did when he performed his first miracle at the wedding at Cana. When, after days of celebrations, the wine ran out, he ordered large containers to be filled with water, and then he turned them into first quality wine. Well that is not what I do. I turn wine into vinegar. Not on purpose, mind you. It is not a matter of performing a miracle for me either but rather a matter of sloppy wine-making.

Wine into Vinegar

I don’t make wine to be able to drink it. I don’t really enjoy alcoholic beverages. They remind me of being sick. In my childhood, alcohol was administered as medicine, and the taste reminds me of being sick, so I stay away from it. There is just one wine which I cannot resist, even though it is considered a medicine, and that is sweet dark red Italian Vermouth. I love the bitter taste of Vermouth, AKA wormwood, because the herb has wonderful healing properties. I only make wine because I hate any kind of waste and need to do something with surplus produce. Usually that is apples. They are one of the few fruits which have varieties hardy enough to survive our zone 3 winters, so I plant a lot of apple trees, and we cannot possibly eat as many apples as I grow. In my teens, I spent a summer in the Rhine valley, the mildest region of Germany. The people there make enough "Appelwein" (dialect for Apfelwein = apple wine) from surplus apples to last them as supper beverage all year round. I try to do the same, but I am rarely successful. I am not a fussy person. Having to sterilize bottles and equipment is just not my preferred method of operation. The use of sulpur could help to eliminate some fussy procedures, but I definitely will not use it. Commercial Canadian and American wines contain sulphur, and it makes the blood rush to the surface and makes people hyper. Its commercial use if not permitted in other countries. I am always experimenting, trying to invent shortcuts, and that may be the main reason why my wine-making efforts often take off in new directions. Occasionally, I get a few bottles of really good liqueur without even trying, but most of the time, I produce the best vinegar you ever tasted.

My Wine Vinegar non-Recipe

Don’t ask me for my recipe. I don’t have one, and I change my methods like other people change clothes. Part of the problem is that I never remember what I did last year. Writing things down seems such a waste of time, expecially when I probably would never bother to read what I have written. If you really want a recipe, follow any wine recipe in a book or on the Internet, but be sloppy about sterility. That way, you also will end up with a #1 wine vinegar. I am not even fussy about the kind of fruit I use. I mix and match, depending on what happens to be available in the garden or in my favorite produce store as deeply discounted overripe fruit. I do watch the color combination, though, just like I do when brewing herb teas. If you are an artist, you will know which colors can be mixed to get a pleasing result. If you are not sure, you can always stick to one color per batch. Here are some good combinations:
• Red, orange, peach, and/or yellow.
• Yellow and green.
• Blue and purple.
• Purple and red.
Never mix complementary colors. They combine to make shades of black, grey, or brown. In other words, the result is a look of "dirty." Complementary colors lie opposite each other on the color wheel. In case you do not remember them from your art or physics class, here they are:
• Red and green.
• Blue and orange.
• Yellow and purple.
As you see, one color in a combination is a primary color, red, blue, or yellow. The other is a secondary color (mixture of the other two primary colors) green, orange, and purple. I am not trying to insult your intelligence by talking about things which you may have learned in elementary school. I merely want to accomodate my many readers who have asked me to explain color theory in the past. Even if you are neither an artist or physicist, you need to understand it to produce good color mixtures of herb tea, wine, vinegar, jelly, and jam. You want to make sure that your vinegar does not look like dirty dishwater, because its taste will probably match the color. The understanding of color theory is also of great benefit to web designers. Let me therefore be quick to assure you that I have had no influence on the choice of color combinations at Suite101.com.

Lots of Vinegar. Now what?

What do I do with all that fruity vinegar? Let me count the ways:
• I collect pretty glass bottles with screw-on tops from popular drinks which other people throw out. If they have metal tops, I replace them with plastic ones, because the vinegar would eat its way through the metal.
• I fill the vinegar into clean glass bottles and let some of it age for my own use. Like good wine, it improves with time.
• I use the vinegar mixed with extra virgin olive oil for salads
• In the bathroom and the kitchen, I keep a squirt bottle to use after washing my hands, hair, or dishes. It prevents chapped or dry skin and dandruff by neutralizing alkalinity.
• I keep it in a spray bottle as underarm deodorant. The change in pH prevents the proliferation of bacteria.
• It prevents athlete’s foot by changing the pH which causes it.
• I add a bit to diluted juice, our daily drink, about one teaspoon to a 2 litre bottle, to prevent yeast infections.
• The pretty little bottles of wine vinegar come in handy as Christmas presents. They are much appreciated for their fruit flavor. You won't find anything comparable in a store.
Commercial salad vinegars may just be flavored. Mine are real fruit.



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