Red wine vinegar is an essential ingredient in Italian cooking, bringing just the right touch of acidity without overwhelming other flavors in a given dish. But just like olive oil, pasta, and canned tomatoes, quality varies significantly from one brand to the next. So how do you know what’s best for your kitchen?
Your first clue is the container itself: it should be a dark glass bottle. Plastic and exposure to sunlight erode the quality of the vinegar over time. Second, look for a red wine vinegar that specifies the type or types of grapes used. The producer should be proud of the provenance of their grapes. Finally, hold the bottle up to the light: you should see traces of sediment in the cloudy liquid. This is a sign the vinegar is unpasteurized, unfiltered, and “alive”!
We source our red wine vinegar from the Bini family in Salina. They acidify Valpolicella wine before aging it in large wooden barrels for five years. The result is a mellow, fruity vinegar with a woodsy flavor and a slight effervescence.
Artisanal red wine vinegar
All red wine vinegar is made from acidified red wine. The main difference between one red wine vinegar to the next is their production method, which ultimately impacts flavor and cost. Wine becomes vinegar via a process called acetic fermentation. Depending on the method used, this can take anywhere from less than a day to nearly a year.
Artisanal red wine vinegars undergo either static surface fermentation or slow fermentation. With static surface fermentation, aka the Orléans method, wooden barrels of wine loosely covered in cloth spontaneously acidify over 6-8 months. Slow fermentation speeds things up by constantly circulating the wine in a large, shelved vat with layers of grape stems on each shelf. These materials act as a “lung” for the acidic bacteria, and acidification occurs in roughly 15 days.
On the other hand, cheaper, commodity red wine vinegars become acidic with the submerged fermentation technique. After the red wine is boiled and then cooled, a turbine forces air through the liquid to expose the acetic bacteria to alcohol and oxygen as quickly as possible. This way, red wine becomes vinegar in as little as 16 hours. This scarcely improve upon the distilled vinegar you’d use to clean with!
What happens next?
Once the red wine transforms into vinegar, it’s not quite ready to be sold. To ensure a longer, verging on eternal, shelf life, some producers clarify and pasteurize their vinegar to remove any traces of the “mother”. Then, some treat it with colorants and even dilute it with water. The result is a clear, bright, pinkish product with weak aromas.
Artisanal wine vinegar producers, however, never filter or pasteurize. Instead, they transfer the liquid to wooden barrels to age. Barrel aging mellows the flavor and imparts complex aromas. Once bottled, cloudiness and the presence of the “mother” are seen as a good sign! Since these vinegars are alive or “raw” when sold, their flavor changes over time.
How to use red wine vinegar
Cook with red wine vinegar whenever you feel your dish could use a lift of acidity. Use it with eggs, to marinate meat, to make pickled vegetables, and of course in salad dressing. We especially love it to dress radicchio. Try our radicchio salad with anchovies, capers, and hazelnuts or our insalata with prosciutto and Zibibbo raisins.
But our favorite red wine vinegar hack? It’s the secret ingredient in our bucatini all’amatriciana! Take Chef Sarah Cicolini’s advice and use it to deglaze the pan of fatty guanciale before adding the tomatoes. You’ll never make amatriciana any other way.