Old Wine, Sour Wine, 21 Day Old Wine

When I worked in the winery, Roger used to keep a container of constantly fermenting vinegar in a dark corner of the winery.  I understood the basics:  by keeping a bacterial culture alive in the container, we could continually drain off some vinegar when we needed some for the home kitchen and occasionally we would top off the container with left over or spilled wine.


However, I never understood the word "vinegar".  Not being much of a French reader or writer, there is a lot about the language I miss. "Vin", of course, I knew meant wine.  "Aigre" is a common word that means sour.  But, somehow, I never made the connection that the French were saying "VinAigre" from which we took our "Vinegar". ("Doh!")

If you know how to read & write Chinese, you already know how to make vinegar! The character on the left means "rice" and the one on the right means "vinegar".  Here's the breakdown for the vinegar character:

Three weeks of bacterial fermentation to take wine to vinegar sounds about right to me.
To write it is to know it!