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How do I make a good wine vinegar?

Starting from a bottle of blackcurrant wine,say, that I don't quite care for..

You could try simply opening the bottle and leaving it in a warm place. It will probably catch an acetobacter infection and turn into vinegar - but it may catch any other bacteria and turn into furry stuff. The sure fire method is to buy some unpasteurised and unfiltered vinegar (any sort will do). Pour your wine into a container and add a half-cupful of the vinegar. Cover the container and leave it in a warm and dark place for a couple of weeks to a month. You then have blackcurrant vinegar which you can use to your heart's content, not forgetting that it can also be used to inocculate more wine.

Mike

EDIT: Forgot - you may need to adjust the alcoholic strength of the wine by watering it down. Anything above 10% or so (which will make a VERY strong vinegar) and you may not get any conversion at all.

Mike,does that mean water the wine BEFORE I add the vinegar? And how do I measure it's strength? Sorry if that's a bit moronic,but white wine I can get cheaply, it's decent White Wine vinegar that's more difficult(and the beetroot season approaches ). Thanks.

That's before you add the vinegar, OJ. Strangely, alcohol (the stuff which is converted into acetic acid) can actually prevent the process from occurring at all. You can use any of the usual methods of determining alcoholic strength (hydrometer etc) or, if you know how much sugar was used to make the wine, one pound of sugar ends up as 5% alcohol ABV.

Mike

Excellent - thanks - just need to find some unpasteurised unfiltered vinegar now :-

And me.Thanks Mike.

Fleabay have several stockist of cider vinegar with mother - that's the bit you need.

dave45 wrote:Excellent - thanks - just need to find some unpasteurised unfiltered vinegar now :-

generally any cider vinegar with some geddies (floaty bits) in the bottom will work.

we made wine the other year and most of the bottles turned to vinigar, unintentionally. it was the first time we had done it

we had to make mulled wine from it with lots of sugar, orange and ciniman ect, as it was undrinkable straight from the bottle. and one bottle actually exploded on me when i opened it