Vinegar culture

Vinegar was discovered by chance over 10 000 years ago. A jug of wine gone sour turned out to be a wonderful new product in spite of being just that, sour wine. Though today vinegar is made of other materials than wine like fruit, rice, beer or cereals, the principle is the same: a fermentation of natural sugars into alcohol followed by a second fermentation into vinegar.

Our ancestors quickly found the remarkable versatility of vinegar through different experiences, anecdotes and uses. Babylonians used it as preservative and seasoning. Roman legionnaires used the vinegar as a drink, Cleopatra demonstrated the extraordinary solvent property of vinegar when she bet she could consume a fortune in one single meal by dissolving pearls in a glass.

Vinegar was one of the first medicines and precisely Hippocrates praised its medicinal and healing properties. When Hannibal crossed the Alps it was vinegar that helped him open the way. The boulders that obstructed the way were heated and showered with vinegar, which cracked and broke them. Vinegar was used during the World War I to cure wounds and today we still use vinegar to calm and treat for instance insect bites. (Source: The Vinegar Institute)