The mother of all vinegars!

There are several reasons that we stock vinaigriers at Twice. They are very traditional, having been made in France, by the same potteries, for centuries, particularly the lovely salt-glazed ones that we have. I first came across them at my mother in law's house. She has had one for years sitting in the larder and any leftover red wine is popped in the top and then from time to time we would all be given jars of vinegar to take home. A few years ago, she very kindly gave us the one pictured above one for Christmas. A few weeks later a jar arrived here filled with something horribly gloopy - this turned out to be the vinegar 'mother'. This is the starter that is one way of making your vinegar - you can look it all up on Google, but essentially it is a form of acetic acid bacteria that causes alcohol to turn into acid. So, we plopped it into our vinagrier and then started to add bits of red wine from time to time - if there was any left in the bottle! It takes several weeks to start to smell anything like proper vinager and we would often forget about ours entirely for weeks at a time. But then, after a while, whenever I needed any red wine vinager I would just take it directly from the tap.

About this time, I started trying to source the vinaigriers for Twice. It's quite a thing because French companies don't really seem to want to do business with anyone! I searched and searched and found companies but no contact details. Then I finally did find contact details and sent emails. Many just didn't reply and those that did weren't very helpful. Finally, I discovered the Renault pottery that makes our lovely rustic jars have an agent in the UK - at last, someone who actually wanted to sell something to me! Once I'd got them in stock I started to research the actual vinegar making in more detail because someone was bound to ask me how to do it.

We provide instructions for making vinegar with each vinaigrier that we sell and there are several ways of starting off - 1) get some vinegar mother from a friend, 2) make your own mother or 3) start with a mixture of bought vinegar and wine. The bottom line is that is boils down to trial and error and working out what works best in your vinegar's environment. Web research has thrown up a great blog in the States where a lady called Kim Adams gives the most down to earth advice on making vinegar that I've come across. Click here for the link. She will tell you how to make vinegar from whole bottles of wine or from bits and pieces.


The way we've made our vinegar has been very hit or miss but this week we finally got to the stage where we had a full vinaigrier and it was time for bottling. I turned on the tap and emptied the whole thing slowly into jugs, waiting all the time to find the globulous mother sitting somewhere in the jar. But .... none! I don't know where it's gone but we have perfectly good vinegar and no mother. I think that what might have happened is that because we kept tipping bits of wine into the top, this can cut off the air supply to the mother and kill it and it then sinks to the bottom - not sure what happens when it gets there, but ours disappeared. So now I am embarking on making my own mother from scratch and we'll see what happens then. In the meantime, as you can see we have several litres of really good red wine vinegar and no wasted wine!

To see the vinaigrier on our website click here.