A History of Vinegar

Vinegar is everywhere. We use it in cooking, on our fries, to dip our focaccia bread in, mixed with herbs and oil to create a vinaigrette for salads . . . it's a staple of our diet. The funny thing is, it all came about by accident, over 10, 000 years ago!

Vinegar is easily made. The majority of our vinegar is made from fermented grapes. "Wait, isn't that wine?" you say? Well, yes, but if you re-ferment wine, you have vinegar. So, if you let grapes go bad, you get wine and when the wine goes bad, you get vinegar.

However, vinegar can be made from a wide range of foods. Everything from potatoes and beets to maple sugar and coconuts have been turned into exotic vinegars. The basic process never changes, though. The food is always fermented into an alcoholic beverage, then again into vinegar and the process has not changed in over 10,000 years. Pretty astounding, isn't it?

Among the various types of vinegars that are still on the market today, we have rice wine, balsamic, herbal, apple cider, and raspberry red wine. Each of these is fermented down from a different type of fruit or produce to create a unique taste and acid.

The word "vinegar" comes from the French "vin aigre" which, literally translated, means "sour wine", a rather apt description. This sour wine became popular in 5,000 BC when the Babylonians discovered its use as a delectable condiment. They also used it as a preservative, some of the first pickles were actually Babylonian!

Vinegar has had many jobs over the decades. It has been used for its medical properties, to disinfect wounds and to treat scurvy, among others. It has been used to quench thirst and Cleopatra even used it to dissolve pearls so she could drink them! Another little known use of this novel liquid is to crack and break down rocks, as Hannibal did when he led his Army across the Alps. He first heated the boulders in his way, then poured vinegar over them, after which they were easily removed in pieces.

The next time you take down a bottle of vinegar to whip up a salad dressing or to add to a recipe that calls for it as a condiment, stop for a minute and think about all that this amazing liquid can do! It heals, it flavors, it cleans. That's a lot for something that is just bad wine!