The story of our REd Wine Vinegar…
I thought I'd explain where and how our red wine vinegar came to be. Please read this account not quite with a grain of salt but with some suspicion. Some time ago when I was watching the Nixon saga go down, I remember all these old blokes saying, "I don't exactly remember." At the time I said to myself, what a bunch of baloney, "They don't exactly remember." Now I'm nearly 70 and I completely get it, "I don't exactly remember." So, here we go. At least I hope you find the recounting entertaining.
Our first harvest at AmByth was in 2006, exactly 6 barrels of wine. When you rack wine, that is, transfer wine off the lees or in preparation for bottling, transfer into stainless steel there is always residual, left behind, excess sediment (I might write another story about that including my errors and successes). At A.B. we would take that sediment and pour it onto our compost pile which then later on gets put back onto the vineyard. By '09 (I think) that quantity of sediment was growing and being the businessman that I tend to be I wondered if I could transfer some of that into a product for sale. The light clicked on, vinegar. But of course being who I am and doing what we do I didn't want to do it the easy way, that is add a store bought mother, I wanted ours to grow by itself, from the residual. I started with half a regular barrel outside the winery, with the bung allowing air in. Some old time members may remember this, I would take people out to taste the "Vinegar". For 2 years it wouldn't turn, it was delicious. The barrel beetles attacked the barrel and half of it leaked out. I transferred the remainder to stainless steel, added to it and again left it outside. Another year, yes some definite change but still taking its time. Being impatient I opened the barrel (our stainless barrels can be completely opened at one end). Half the barrel was a huge mother. O.k., I was on the right track. I removed 3/4 of the mother and put everything back together. At the time I had 5 cases of a very old french organic wine with 1/2 the corks not functioning very well. I added these to the barrel. As time moved on, the barrel became full and I transferred 1/2 of it to another stainless barrel, this is the beginning of a solera system. The lowest barrel contains '09. The newest barrel is on the top. I had 4 barrels. At some point I felt the lowest barrel was ready and we bottled some. This is what's called '09 solera wine vinegar. Once that vinegar is removed that barrel is topped from above and so it goes.
So whenever you buy a bottle of AmByth wine vinegar it contains some vintage '09 making it an '09 vintage solera wine vinegar.
Buyer beware it isn't commercial wine vinegar, it actually is real wine vinegar with no additives, have fun.
-Phillip Hart, Founder
