Here on the VC Blog, we’ve talked about wine vinegars a lot.  We’ve discussed how to make delicious homemade red wine vinegar and white wine vinegar from those leftover bottles taking up space in your kitchen.  We’ve also talked about how to then take those tasty vinegars to make individual bottles of flavored vinegars that are equally great to use in the kitchen and to give as gifts.

Now, maybe you’ve thought that making your own vinegars sounds fun and cost-effective.  Maybe you have a gallon or so of vinegar ingredients doing their thing in your pantry.  Maybe you’ve started to wonder: what am I going to do with all this vinegar?  Well, here are just a few ways you can use homemade vinegar in the kitchen:

• Vinaigrette: In a few tablespoons of vinegar, dissolve salt (and, if you like, a little dijon mustard and/or minced garlic or shallots).  Slowly stream in olive oil to taste, only a few drops at a time at first, whisking all the while.  This is a tasty, healthy salad or veggie dressing.
• A splash of vinegar in a sauce or glaze wakes up the flavors without adding salt or fat.
• Vinegar is a great dieting tool–sprinkle it on foods to add taste at only 2 calories per tablespoon. Vinegar also dulls the appetite and gets rid of cravings for sweets.
• Use vinegar as a marinade.  Vinegar, since it’s acidic, breaks down tissue, making your meats super tender.  Splash some vinegar (and herbs, if you’d like) into a bag with your meat and let it hang out for a few hours or overnight.
• If you get stains from fruit on your hands, remove by wiping with vinegar.
• Love poached eggs but have a hard time keeping them from falling apart while cooking?  Add a splash of vinegar to a barely simmering pot–vinegar helps the whites coagulate.  Crack eggs into small individual bowls, and gently tip into the water one by one.  After 3 minutes or so, you’ll have perfect poached eggs.
• Use wine vinegar to deglaze a pan.  After browning meat in oil or butter, remove all but a tablespoon of fat.  Crank up the heat and pour in a splash of vinegar.  Boil and scrape away at the bottom of the pan to loosen all those tasty brown bits.  Add stock or even water, and finish with a pat of butter for a delicious and easy pan sauce.
• Fish and chips!  Enough said.
• Use in place of lemon.  (Both are intended to add acid to a dish.)  Add 1/4 teaspoon vinegar for a tablespoon of lemon juice.
• Sprinkle wine vinegar and olive oil over a sub sandwich for a flavorful, healthy alternative to mayo and mustard.
• Have white coffee cups stained from coffee or tea?  Wipe out with white vinegar to remove the stains.
• Stinky kitchen?  Boil a quarter cup of white wine vinegar with a little water.  Let the smell circulate around the kitchen and it will remove smoky, fishy, or any other nasty smells.
• Clean vegetables with 2 tablespoons of vinegar in a gallon of water.
• Add a dash of vinegar to a canned soup or sauce to wake up the flavors and make them taste fresh.

There are dozens of uses for vinegars in your kitchen and the rest of your home. These are just a start….share your favorites in the comments!

We’ve discussed how your can use your leftover bottles of red and white wine to make delicious homemade wine vinegars.  If you’ve already tried this, you know that homemade vinegars are infinitely better than anything you can buy at the store.  They make better vinaigrettes and sauces, and are just plain tastier.  Homemade vinegar is easy to make and very economical.  But if you’re ambitious, you don’t have to stop there!  Try using your homemade wine vinegar to make flavored vinegars that are out-of-this-world delicious.

Flavored vinegars have really become popular in the last few years.  They are simply bottled vinegars that fresh herbs and spices have been allowed to steep in.  The vinegar, given time, really draws out the taste of the flavorings, and takes on a whole new level of flavor and complexity.  Flavored vinegars can be used in place of regular vinegar to any recipe, adding a special zip of flavor.  For example, instead of a plain vinaigrette on your salad, why not try something like an orange-basil white wine vinaigrette or a red wine raspberry vinaigrette?  Flavored vinegars are good, but flavored vinegars made using homemade wine vinegars are incredibly delicious.

The process is a little time consuming, but simple.  Think of making flavored vinegars as similar to canning.  The more important (and boring) step is ensuring that the containers you’re using are totally free of bacteria before you close them up.  Even the tiniest bit will ruin the batch, so you have to be very careful.  You’ll want to disinfect your containers right before you bottle your vinegars, to minimize the chance they’ll be exposed to something nasty.  First, wash all the containers you’re going to use, along with their lids (good options are canning jars, screw-capped bottles, and corked bottles with brand-new corks).  Next, immerse them in boiling water for at least 10 minutes.  While this is happening, bring your vinegar to a boil in a separate pot.

At this point, you should have already laid out the herbs and spices you want to use.  You can use basically any kind of herb or spice in vinegar, so get creative!  Herbs can be used whole, which makes for a pretty presentation.  Garlic makes a great addition to almost any vinegar–just peel the cloves and drop them in whole.  To get you started, here are some herbs and spices that make great vinegars:

tarragon

basil

chives

cilantro

rosemary

lemon or orange zest (cut into long strips for the best presentation)

dill

whole peppercorns

chili peppers

You can make a vinegar with just one addition, such as spicy chili vinegar, or a combination, such as rosemary garlic vinegar. If you’ve made both red and white wine vinegars, you have a choice on which to use.  Use white wine vinegar for subtler flavors like citrus and the delicate herbs like basil, and red wine vinegar for the heartier flavors like peppercorns and rosemary.  Play to your tastes and get creative!  Add the herbs and spices you want to use to the bottle first, then, using a funnel, carefully pour in the hot vinegar.  Seal the container (for an extra fancy touch, pour melted wax over the top), and let the vinegars steep in a cool dark place for at least three weeks to let the vinegar really take on the flavors of the herbs.

These vinegars are so fun and personal (and tasty) that they make incredible gifts.  Store-bought gourmet flavored vinegars be very costly.  But they are simple to make at home, and very inexpensive.  If you’re giving vinegars as presents, leave herbs whole for the best effect, and put a pretty tag on the bottle with the name of the vinegar.  One bottle of your homemade flavored vinegar makes a great gift for a dinner party host.  A small basket of a few choice vinegars makes an incredible Christmas gift.  But consider yourself warned–homemade flavored wine vinegars are so delicious that you might not want to give them away!

One of our most popular posts on the Vintage Cellars Blog has been How to Make Your Own Red Wine Vinegar.  Our readers seem to love the idea of using up bottles of red that are a little past their prime to make something delicious and useful.  But did you know that it’s just as easy to make your own white wine vinegar as it is to make red?  Here’s what to do:

1.  Buy a ceramic or glass crock.  At least a one gallon size is best–this seems excessive, but you’ll want enough room to add lots of extra wine, and you don’t want to be limited in how much vinegar you can produce–small bottles of your homemade vinegar make great gifts!  Make sure your crock has a spigot to make bottling your vinegar easy.

2.  Obtain a vinegar starter, commonly referred to as a mother.  A mother is a combination of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria.  It uses oxygen from the air to turn alcohol into acetic acid.  A mother is a weird cloudy mass that sits at the bottom of your vinegar crock.  Although it looks unappetizing, it won’t hurt you, and you can easily strain it out of your vinegar with a coffee filter if you want to.  You can get a vinegar mother from a beer and wine-making supply store, from the internet, or from a vinegar-making friend.

3.  Put the vinegar in the crock, then add diluted white wine in the ratio of 2 parts wine to 1 part water.  The less you add, the more quickly it will turn to vinegar.  2 cups wine to 1 cup water is a good start.  The better the wine is, the better the vinegar will be, because good wines have a variety of complex flavors, which will translate to an interesting, full-flavored vinegar.

4.  The best thing about vinegar making is that you can use those half-empty bottles that have been taking up space in your fridge.  Since the alcohol in wine starts to turn into acetic acid when you open it, wine a little past its prime simply has a jump-start on becoming vinegar!  Because of this, vinegar-making is very cost-effective.

5.  Cover the top of your crock with a cheesecloth and attach it firmly with a rubber band.  This keeps out insects, but lets in the oxygen that makes the process happen.

6.  Add small doses of white wine once a week or so.  (Or whenever you have a half-empty bottle sitting around.)

7.  Wait at least 12 weeks, then taste-test.  If it smells like vinegar and tastes like vinegar, it’s ready!  Bottle it using a funnel.  Any vinegar left in the crock (be careful to leave the mother, too), you can continue to use to make more vinegar.  Just keep adding more white wine!  Use your vinegar to make sauces and vinaigrettes, and a million other tasty dishes.

You’ll find that homemade vinegar has a much different taste than store-bought–it’s fuller and richer, and doesn’t have as much harsh bite to it.  You can use it in endless ways in the kitchen, and it makes great gifts.  Check our next post for a description of how to take your homemade vinegar by making pretty and delicious flavored vinegars.

16th century wine press

I love to cook with wine.  But I admit it, sometimes, pouring a cup or a bottle of perfectly good wine into the cooking pot can seem a little sacrilegious.  Is using your good wine in your food worth it?

In a word, yes.  Wine imparts a richness and depth of flavor that is simply hard to come by any other way.  When making sauces, soups, or stews, many recipes call for you to deglaze the pan.  This takes place usually after some meat has been browned (cooked at high heat in some kind of fat until the skin is crispy).  The meat is removed, most of the fat is poured off, and the heat is turned up high.  A generous splash of wine is added, and as it boils, the cook swirls and scrapes with a wooden spoon or spatula, getting the little browned bits unstuck from the bottom of the pan and incorporating them into the dish.  Tons flavor resides in those little brown bits, and deglazing the pan incorporates their taste into the finished dish.  You can use stock or even water for deglazing, but wine adds a rich, unctuous flavor that can’t be replicated by anything else.

Wine isn’t just used for deglazing.  A splash of wine added to a reducing sauce gives it that same deep, rich flavor that we desire when we’re cooking and eating.  The next time you make tomato sauce, try adding a splash of wine (usually half a cup to a full cup) before letting the sauce simmer and reduce.  You’ll be amazed at the richness and flavor it adds.

Wine is also great for marinating meat.  A red wine marinade is a natural partner for beef, as the tannins in the red wine interact favorably with the meat’s fats.  The acid in wine really breaks down the connective tissue in meat.  This means that marinating a tougher cut of meat in wine can really tenderize it, as well as adding flavor to it.  One of my favorite cuts to use this technique with is flank steak.  Flank steak is a thin, tougher cut, but it packs a lot of flavor.  Best of all, it’s inexpensive, usually comes in pieces big enough to feed an army, and sliced thinly, the leftovers make great steak sandwiches.  Try seasoning a flank steak with salt and pepper, and throwing it in a large Ziploc bag with a few garlic cloves, a splash of olive oil, and enough wine to thoroughly soak it.  Let it hang out in the refrigerator for several hours, turning every once in a while to make sure the wine is evenly distributed.  Then simply grill and serve.  This steak is great paired with the same wine used in the marinade.

I don’t set much store by those chefs that advocate using only high-quality wine for cooking.  I think that the flavors are so diluted by the flavors added by the food, and changed by the chemical processes that occur during cooking, that spending a lot of money on wine that you’re just going to dump in the pot is kind of a waste.  You do want to use decent wine that you would drink—avoid those cooking wines sold in the grocery stores—they are highly acidic, and have tons of preservatives, which simply don’t taste good.  They are often also highly salty, which can alter the flavor of the food you’re cooking so much that you ruin the taste.

Cooking is a great way to use a good wine that’s been sitting around for a day or two.  Its optimal drinking window has passed, but that doesn’t meant that all those great flavors should go to waste.  Don’t use a wine that tastes vinegary or rancid, or your food will taste that way too.  But something a little past its prime should be fine.

Cooking with wine isn’t just for the experts.  There are lots of simple ways to incorporate it into your dishes.  And when you’ll do, you’ll find that wine adds so many wonderful, subtle flavors that you’ll never want your kitchen to be without it again.

As summer approaches, it’s time to start thinking about light, refreshing beverages that are ideal for sipping and savoring on a warm, sunny day.  White wine, rosé, and even some reds are wonderful wine choices, of course, and we’ll be highlighting some especially good choices in the posts to come.

But say you’re having a party, or just celebrating a special day with a friend or significant other.  You might want something a little more special and different than a regular glass of wine.  Wine cocktails are a really fun way to use wine in a unique way.

One of my all-time favorite wine cocktails is this White Wine Sangria.  I make it all the time for barbecues and beach parties, and my friends always request it.  It’s light and delicious, perfect for relaxing on those perfect warm days.

There are many, many ways to make Sangria, a drink that originated in Spain.  At its most basic, Sangria is wine with fruit added to it.  The fruit is allowed to soak in the wine for several hours or even several days.  This gives the wine a delicious, fresh fruity flavor.  It also gives the fruit an irresistibly rich, winey taste.

The recipe for Sangria that follows isn’t particularly traditional, but it is delicious.  It’s important to remember that this recipe is very adaptable.  Feel free to change it to suit your own tastes, whether that means making it a little sweeter, changing up the fruit used, or using a different brand of wine.  Make your own signature Sangria, and your friends will be requesting it at parties for years to come!

White Wine Sangria

This recipe serves a crowd, so make sure you start with a big enough container.  A large punch bowl is perfect.  Add to the container:

• 2-3 bottles of white wine.  Use your favorite summery variety. Quality isn’t too important here, since you’re going to be adding so many other flavors to the drink, so don’t feel like you have to break the bank here.

• Orange juice to taste.  Using freshly squeezed oranges really makes a difference here.  If you don’t want to take the time, use a high-quality 100% juice brand like Simply Orange. I find that juices from concentrate are too sweet for this recipe, but if you happen to love sweeter drinks, feel free to use them!  I’d start with half a bottle.  If you want to really taste the wine flavor, add less.  If you want to make more of a fruity cocktail, add more.  Remember you can always add more if you want it, but you can never take it out!

• A variety of fruit, cut into bite-sized pieces.  Use plenty of fruit, as you’ll want each glass to have a generous amount.  You’ll want to lean towards whatever is seasonal and especially delicious (bonus: seasonal fruit is also the least expensive).  My favorite combination is oranges, green apples, and strawberries.  The oranges mirror and enhance the orangey flavor from the juice, the apples add a delicious tartness, and the sweet strawberries are the perfect foil for the wine, soaking up the alcohol and really bringing out its deep, rich nuances.  But let your imagination run wild!  It would be great to use tangerines instead of oranges, or try different types of berries, or even grapes. Play to your tastes!

• Optional: rum to taste.  I love to use dark rum when I’m making this for a party.  It adds an interesting spicy flavor.  Feel free to use white rum if you prefer it.  Warning, this drink can sneak up on you: it’s fruity sweetness really masks the alcohol taste.  So add rum at your own discretion.

It’s best to make the recipe up to this point in advance.  A few hours in the refrigerator before party time gives the flavors the chance to mingle and develop.  The fruit really needs time to add its tastes to the drink, so give it a chance by making the drink ahead.  If you want to take some of the stress out of party planning, you can make the recipe  up to this point the night before, and refrigerate it overnight.

• Right before you serve it, add a bottle of champagne to the drink.  The champagne gives it a light, refreshing quality and really turns it into a party cocktail.  I tend to go the dry champagne route, but use whatever you like.  As with the wine, quality isn’t that important, so don’t waste that nice bottle you’ve been saving on this recipe.  Important: DON’T stir the drink after you add the champagne, or you’ll ruin the bubbles!

• Serve in a punch bowl or in a pitcher (you’ll need to keep refilling it).  Provide your guests with some kind of wide-brimmed glass to make room for the fruit.  A margarita glass is perfect, but red wine glass works too, and even a regular drinking glass is fine in a pinch.  Make sure you bring along a big spoon so that your guests can get some fruit into their glasses, and encourage them to eat the fruit, not throw it away—most people think it’s the best part!

Don’t forget that you can really change and adapt this recipe to suit your tastes.  Here’s one idea: Tropical Sangria perfect for a Luau.  Use the above recipe, substituting pineapple juice for the orange juice, and using tropical fruits like mango, kiwi, and pineapple.  Aloha!

Are you tired of throwing out half-full bottles of wine?  Do you wish you could put those leftovers to good use?  You can!  Try making homemade red wine vinegar.  Not only is it a great way to use up the ends of bottles, it’s easy and the results are spectacular.

Homemade red wine vinegar is very different from the store-bought stuff.  Even expensive store-bought vinegars are often rushed through fermentation, making them highly acidic and lacking in flavor.  Homemade vinegar, by contrast, has a milder, more rounded taste that is great for deglazing a pan, incorporating into a sauce, and of course, for making a great vinaigrette.

You’ll need a starter, commonly referred to as a mother.  A vinegar mother is composed of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria.  It

A vinegar mother

feeds on a fermenting alcoholic liquid (in this case, red wine), and uses oxygen from the air to turn alcohol into acetic acid.  A mother is a strange-looking, cloudy-whitish substance (see picture), but it can’t hurt you or the vinegar, and it’s easy to strain it out from your product with a coffee filter.

You can make your own mother by leaving out vinegar, uncovered and ideally in a shallow dish, to catch the naturally-occurring bacteria from the air and allow it to cultivate.  But this can be a tough and time-consuming process; it’s easy to start cultivating the wrong bacteria and watch your vinegar attempts rot again and again.  If you want to make it easy on yourself, you can either get a mother from a vinegar-making friend, or you can order one from a beer-and-wine-making supplier.

Besides your mother, you’ll need an earthenware crock with a plastic or wooden spigot.  Bigger is better here–a crock that holds at least a gallon will free you up to make a large quantity of vinegar.  If you think you might want to bottle your vinegar for friends–it makes a great gift–buy a bigger one.

Vinegar-making doesn’t require a specific recipe, but here’s a basic one to get your started: Add two parts red wine to one part vinegar to your crock, and toss in the mother.  Cover the crock with cheesecloth (to keep out insects) and attach it with a rubber band.  Then simply add a couple cups of red wine to the crock twice a week for the next two weeks.  Let the crock sit for about 10 weeks.  When it tastes and smells like vinegar, it’s ready.

The best wine vinegars are made from good wines.  Typically, fruitier, younger wines result in tastier vinegars.  After your vinegar is ready, you can let it age in the bottle for a deeper, richer flavor.  You can even add herbs or spices to make flavored vinegars.

Stop throwing away your leftover wine!  Put it to good use, and enjoy a tasty, homemade red wine vinegar for many meals to come.

When you’re deep into winter, when temperatures dip low and frost covers the ground…ok, we’re in San Diego, but give us a break: it’s only been in the 60s this week!  Regardless of just how cold it is where you are, this is the time of year when you start to crave the fresh and wonderful flavors of summer:  juicy red strawberries, succulent kiwis, and sweet melons.  Luckily, there’s still a way to satisfy those fresh fruit cravings: by adding them to wine to make sangria.  So call up your friends, pick up some fresh fruit, and enjoy a cup of summer right here in January!

Sangria, a traditional Spanish drink often served at parties, has many variations.  The recipe we give below isn’t particularly traditional, but it is delicious.  Note that approximations are given rather than specific amounts: this is so you can vary the drink to your tastes.  It’s a very forgiving beverage, and a little extra splash of this or that won’t hurt; in fact, these variations are what make Sangria special: each batch is unique.  The best part is that you can change the fruits with the season.  The original recipe uses apples, oranges, and strawberries, but for winter, try this version with pears, apples, and tangerines.  Be creative: use whatever looks good at the market and you’re sure to be happy with the result.  This is also a budget-friendly recipe; since you’re sweetening the wine, quality isn’t all that important.

Wintertime Red Wine Sangria

(This recipe makes enough for a small gathering.)

Combine:

• 2 bottles of red wine (dry, young, acidic, fruit-forward wines work best.)
• Orange juice to taste (the sweeter you like it, the more juice you add.  Honey can be added to sweeten it up even more.)
• Pears, Granny Smith apples, and tangerines, all cut into bite-sized pieces.  (A rough estimate: about 2-3 pears, 2-3 apples, and 4-6 tangerines, depending on their size and how much fruit you like.)
• 1 bottle champagne (wait to add this until right before you’re going to drink it to prevent it from going flat.)
• Rum, to taste (optional)

It’s best to make this ahead of time so the flavors can marry and the fruit can become infused with the wine.  It looks great in a large wine or margarita glass.  Be sure to serve this with a spoon so your guests can scoop up all of that delicious fruit!