wine vinegar

The very best wine vinegars — white or red — are still made using the ancient Orléans process, requiring a lot of patience. Some commercially produced wine vinegars are not made from wine at all but from yeast fermented grape juice. The slow, ancient method of making vinegar was perfected in medieval Orléans, France, born from a desire to salvage spoiled barrels of Burgundy and Bordeaux wine.

The Orléans process involved inoculating partially filled barrels of diluted wine with a vinegar "mother" from a previous batch and then allowing it to ferment, producing finished vinegar in about two to three months.