Vinegar has a sweet success story for a sour surprise. The word vinegar comes from the French terms ‘vin’, which means wine, and ‘aigre’, which means sour. The combination describes exactly what vinegar is, sour wine. Historians say that about ten thousand years ago, someone left some wine standing about for too long and it went sour. The result was vinegar.

The vinegar bought in stores today is a result of experimenting and controlling the process of changing wine into vinegar. However, the basic formula to make vinegar is very simple. Yeast changes natural sugars into alcohol, a process called fermentation, which creates wine. For making vinegar the stating substance can consist of fruits, vegetables or beer. A bacterium in the newly formed alcohol works to transform it into an acid. This second process is called acid fermentation or secondary fermentation. The wine, or other alcoholic beverage, is simply exposed to air for a certain amount of time.

Most people think of vinegar only in terms of salad dressing and pickles, but vinegar is much more. History tells us that vinegar has been used for medicinal purposes for centuries. Around 400 B.C. the man known as the father of medicine, Hippocrates, regularly prescribed vinegar for his patients. Over the centuries, doctors have recommended vinegar for skin disorders, lung ailments (as an inhalant), fever, sprains and internal bleeding.  Roman soldiers are said to have put vinegar in their water to purify it for drinking and cooking use. It is also said that Hannibal used vinegar to aid his crossing of the Alps. He would heat boulders and then douse them with vinegar, which caused the large rocks to crack and crumble.

However, the most important use of vinegar over the years has been in the expected culinary frontier. Refrigerators have been in existence for less than a hundred years, so food preservation has always been highly important. Pickling, salting and drying were used to preserve most foods. The most important pickling solution has always been vinegar. Today vinegar is still extremely important in out food products, and in some unexpected places. Did you know vinegar is used in Lifesaver’s Butter Rum flavored candy? It can also be used to soothe sunburn, kill weeds, even to cut and clean away rust.