Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Just like wine, vinegar made from wine will mellow with age.
Freshly-made vinegar is very sharp with a lot of pointed
edges. When it is allowed to age, the compounds within the
vinegar combine in various ways that make the vinegar more
mellow and to bring out other flavor components.
Even though it is easy to visualize the vinegar mother as
sitting on top of the wine, many of its bacteria are spread
throughout the vinegar. When you draw off a sample, even if
it looks clear, it is filled with acetic acid bacteria. (These
bacteria, incidentally, are totally harmless to humans.)
Freshly-made vinegar is teeming with life.
When vinegar is aged, it is aged with that life intact. The
vinegar is drawn from the crock via the spigot and placed in a
container sealed so as to exclude air. This renders the acetic
acid bacteria dormant. Vinegar can be kept in a sealed
container for an indefinite period of time. In fact, genuine
balsamic vinegar is aged for at least twelve years, and often
for as long as 25 years. The minimum period of aging I would
recommend is six weeks.
Vinegar can be aged in porcelain, glass, impervious plastic, or
wooden barrels. A lot of the better traditionally-made
vinegars feature oak aging. The oak aging serves to impart an
astringent principle to the vinegar in the form of tannin.
Tannin is not just one substance. The term “tannin” refers to
literally dozens if not hundreds of related compounds formed
around either a gallic acid or a flavone core. Tannins have in
common not only their astringency, but also their ability to
bind and precipitate proteins. This means that tannins
introduced into vinegar will scavenge stray proteins left over
from fermentation by combining with them to form an
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