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Claret Vinegar
Place sour claret in a small cask or jug, and add one pint of "mother" to every four quarts of wine. If the "mother" is not obtainable, a twenty-four-inch square of common brown paper may be used, but this method is much slower than the other. Set the cask in the sun, leaving out the bung; and tie a piece of thin muslin, cheesecloth or tarlatan over the opening. The vinegar should be ready for use in five or six weeks.
This is the Orleans method in miniature: live acetic bacteria, air, warmth and time. Two things in the original will trip up a modern cook — the alcohol strength of today's wine and the sulfites in it.
- The hinge: dilute the wineAcetobacter slows and can stall in strong wine, and most guidance keeps the starting liquid under about 10% alcohol. Table wine of this period was generally weaker than today's; modern reds run 13-15%, so cut the wine with about one part water to three parts wine before you start or the mother may simply sit there.
- SulfitesCommercial wine is dosed with sulfur dioxide, which inhibits acetic bacteria along with other spoilage organisms. Leaving the diluted wine uncovered overnight will drive off some of the free sulfite; a low-sulfite or natural wine is the surer choice.
- "Mother"The gelatinous raft and cloudy sediment from a live vinegar. One pint to four quarts of wine is a generous 1:8 starter, which is about right. Unpasteurized raw cider vinegar with visible sediment works as a substitute; filtered supermarket vinegar will not.
- The brown paperPresumably it served to introduce stray bacteria and give them a surface to colonize, though the recipe tells us only that it is much slower. It is unreliable and invites molds and yeasts along with the acetobacter. Better to find a live mother.
- Sun and temperatureWhat the bacteria want is steady warmth around 80–85°F, not sunlight. A dark cupboard near a heat source beats a windowsill, where daytime heat and night cooling swing the temperature and light degrades the wine's color and flavor.
- Vessel and airWide surface area speeds everything, so a gallon jar or crock beats a narrow jug. Fill no more than two-thirds, leave the bung out as directed, and use glass, glazed stoneware or wood — never bare metal, which acetic acid attacks.
- The cloth coverMuslin, cheesecloth or tarlatan is there to keep out fruit flies, which carry both the culture and its competitors, and vinegar eels. Secure it snugly around the opening.
- Timing and finishingFive or six weeks is optimistic in a cool kitchen; taste at four weeks and expect six to twelve. When it tastes sharp and the smell of wine is gone, decant off the mother, bottle, and cap tightly to stop further oxidation.
- Do not use it for canningHomemade vinegar is of unknown strength. Pickling recipes that rely on acidity for safety require vinegar of at least 5% acetic acid, verified. Keep this for dressings, sauces and refrigerator pickles and use commercial vinegar where preservation is the point.
"Claret" is the old English word for the red wines of Bordeaux. Vinegar-making was thrift, not craft — the wine was already spoiling, and the alternative was pouring it out. The method described is the Orleans process in domestic form, named for the French city where wine vinegar was made commercially by keeping a permanent mother in barrels and drawing off finished vinegar as fresh wine was added. The "mother" itself is a cellulose mat produced by Acetobacter bacteria, handled as a living thing long before Pasteur's 1860s work on acetic fermentation explained what it was. The brown-paper substitute is a folk shortcut of the kind that fills books of this era, offered with the honest admission that it works badly.