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Vinegar Wine, French Method of Making
The following is the French method of making vinegar. The wine destined for vinegar is mixed in a large tun with a quantity of wine lees, and the whole being transferred into cloth sacks placed within a large iron-bound vat, the liquid matter is forced through the sacks by superincumbent pressure. What passes through is put into large casks set upright, having a small aperture in their top. In these it is exposed to the heat of the sun in summer, or to that of a stove in winter. Fermentation supervenes in a few days. If the heat should rise too high, it is lowered by cool air and the addition of fresh wine. In the skilful regulation of the fermentative temperature chiefly consists the art of making good wine vinegar. In summer the process is generally completed in a fortnight, in winter double the time is requisite. The vinegar is then run off into barrels, which contain several chips of birchwood. In about a fortnight it is found to be clarified, and is then fit for the market. It must be kept in close casks.
This is an account of the Orléans-style commercial process rather than a household formula, so it gives no quantities and assumes equipment no kitchen has. The chemistry, however, transfers directly to a jar.
- The hinge: air, not heatAcetic fermentation is the work of Acetobacter, which needs oxygen at the surface of the liquid. The "small aperture" in the cask top is the whole point of the design: it admits air while limiting evaporation and fruit flies. A sealed vessel gives no vinegar.
- What temperature they actually meantThe text talks about regulating heat without naming a number. Acetobacter works best around 80-85F; much above 95F it stalls or dies, which likely explains why the French lowered the heat of the fermenting casks with cool air and fresh wine. A warm cupboard, not a sunny windowsill, is the modern equivalent.
- Tun and vatA tun is a very large cask, historically around 250 gallons. The sacks and "superincumbent pressure" describe a screw or lever press squeezing wine and lees together — an industrial clarifying step, not something a home batch needs.
- Wine leesLees are the sediment of dead yeast and fine solids left after fermentation. Here they act as nutrient and as a carrier of resident acetic bacteria; a modern cook would instead use a live vinegar "mother" or a bottle of unpasteurised wine vinegar.
- Birchwood chipsThe chips give the bacteria surface area and help fine particles settle, the same principle as the beechwood shavings used in the later German quick-vinegar generators. Any untreated hardwood does the job; do not use resinous softwood.
- Wine to useSound dry wine of about 6-8 per cent alcohol works best, so table wine diluted with a little water. Heavily sulphited wine inhibits the bacteria, and fortified wine is too strong for them.
- Vessels"Close casks" for storage means tightly stoppered, once fermentation has finished. Keep the vinegar away from reactive metals — glass, glazed stoneware or wood only, as acetic acid attacks aluminium, copper and unlined iron.
- TimingThe fortnight in summer and month in winter given here reflect large volumes with a strong resident culture. A small jar is usually sour in three to six weeks, and readiness is judged by taste and smell rather than by the calendar.
The process described is the Orléans method, named for the city on the Loire where wine coming upriver toward Paris was routinely turned to vinegar rather than wasted, and which became the centre of the French vinegar trade. The word itself is plain enough: vinaigre is vin aigre, sour wine, and for most of history vinegar was simply what happened to wine left open to the air. Cassell's places this in "The Principles of Cookery" because vinegar was a household staple for pickling, preserving and salads, and a cook was expected to know good wine vinegar from the harsh, sometimes adulterated stuff sold cheap. The passage also reflects a period just before the science caught up: Pasteur's work in the 1860s showed that the "fermentative temperature" the French were regulating by feel was in fact the comfort range of a living bacterium.