After our supper of porchetta and potatoes, the neighbors came over and we had a nightcap and a gift exchange. They also got an unexpected gift from Sour Cherry Farm: a vinegar mother I’ve been growing in the basement from natural bacteria. Sound gross? It won’t once you taste their vinegar, aged in smoked oak barrels. Right, Tash?
So yes, first of all: Stump Lane. That’s the name of Tasha and Shannon’s place, mostly because of all the stumps from the tree’s we’ve removed from the property line. First there was the big-ass pin oak in the front yard, which fell way before the girls even moved in next door: A Tree Falls on the Farm. Then there was the one we took down on purpose, a meddling old Mulberry that shaded everything way too much: Sour Cherry Farm Shouts Timber! And lastly, there was the most recent mishap: A Tree Comes Down in Nyack.
So yea, you can see why they came up with Stump Lane, right?
But I digress. Vinegar.
I had a bottle of wine I didn’t much like a few years ago. So I put it on the boiler, half full, and waited to see what happened. You know what happened? Just what I thought would happen: a vinegar mother started to grow within the bottle.
According to WikiPedia, a vinegar mother (or mother of vinegar) is:
substance composed of a form of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria that develops on fermenting alcoholic liquids, which turns alcohol into acetic acid with the help of oxygen from the air. It is added to wine, cider, or other alcoholic liquids to produce vinegar.
I especially liked that it occurred naturally from our own acetic acid bacteria in our own basement, and was saving it for whenever we decided we would invest in some barrels for vinegar making. But every time we searched for barrels, we found them prohibitively expensive.
Then Tasha found some that weren’t.
This oak barrel came from OakBarrelsLtd.com and cost just $75, with free shipping. She soaked it for a few days, and was ready to add her own mother, which wasn’t doing very well, but she figured would take off anyway.
But wait, I said! I have a natural mother down in the basement! You can have it!
It grew inside this bottle of chianti. See the white line?
Now the only challenge was getting it out of the bottle of chianti.
I poured:
Nothing but a bunch of muck:
But you can see the mother trying to come out of the spout, right?
Then I shook:
It kind of just slid up and down the neck of the bottle. Finally, I took the tip of a knife and pulled it to the top of the neck and then gave it a good hard shake. It slid right out.
Looks pretty nasty, doesn’t it?
But we rinsed it and put it into Tasha’s barrel:
Where it will digest the sugars and alcohol from her leftover (!) wine and turn it into a delicious local vinegar. No wonder she’s so happy!
And guess what? I have another mother in another bottle in the basement. Yes, our barrel is on its way.
