Vinegar in a Tux

This is vinegar? 

Weinessiggut Doktorenhof in Venningen

First a little courtyard lesson

And what a courtyard!

Down in the caves

With a monk's cloak, of course

Vinegar Maidens

handblown vinegar goblets

Life can't be ALL vinegar

Prost!

“I’ll have a shot of vinegar and while you’re at it, keep some handy to top off the ice cream.”  Sound bizarre?  Not to diners at the famous Four Seasons restaurant (Chicago) and not to the vinegar makers at Weinessiggut Doktorenhof who take the very sweetest dessert wine, trokenbeerenauslese, or eiswein  (for an explanation of German wines see an earlier stroudallover blog entry), add a hundred year old “mother,” an alcohol-eating bacteria, and age the liquid in oak casks for five to fifteen years.  What you get is a sweetly delectable aperitif that sits on your tongue like your favorite dessert and rolls down your throat with scarcely a bite.

That’s an unexpected twist on an ancient product.  Vinegar in one form or another wanders aimlessly through all of human history.  It’s probably been around since some Neanderthal teenager left the rock off his father’s grog jar.  Hippocrates, the father of medicine, prescribed it for stomach ailments.  Roman legionnaires drank it with water.  Those who lived in the Middle Ages used vinegar to prevent diseases. Evidently, it had a spotty record with the black plague.  But, even today, medical practitioners praise vinegar for its healthful qualities.  As for me, I just found a new favorite designated driver’s drink.

Weinessiggut Doktorenhof does the whole job.  Grows the grapes, such as Spätburgunder, Weißburgunder, and Gewürztraminer, in their expansive vineyards, changes the wine into vinegar, infuses the already sweet vinegar with herbs, or fruits, ages it in huge casks in dark cellars, and ties the whole together process with vinegar as you’ve never tasted it.  Most of the vinegars, carrying such interesting names as “Fig,” “Mozart,” and “Angels Kiss the Night,” are bottled and sold as aperitifs.   Good marketing move not to call them “Hoof of Ox,” or “Catch-a-whiff.” Doktorenhof vinegars are also used to make everything from pralines to mustard, to vinegar-flavored coffee.  Even the modern paintings on the walls were created with vinegar based paints.  I like to use these fabulous vinegars in vinaigrettes.  (see stroudallover on making your own)

Makes you want to drop in for a visit, doesn’t it?  You have to sign up for a tour, which takes about 90 minutes.  First an overview in the courtyard, then inside to don monk’s cloaks and descend into the cavernous cellars.  In the candle lit darkness, with somber tones of Gregorian chants echoing, your guide explains in German the thorough process of making vinegar that is like no other.  To the non-German speaker, whose vocabulary could fit on a postage stamp and still leave room for the Gettysburg Address, the spiel sounds like this:  Vinegar, blah, blah, five years, blah, blah, sweet wine, blah, blah…followed by raucous laughter, which you immediately join in on.  Thumping of casks.  Procession to the next cellar chamber.  More blah, blah, and tasting mustard for no particular reason.  But, the mustard is grand.  The non-German speaker beside me whispers, “Why are we tasting this?”  She expects me to know?  I’m saved by the blah, blahs beginning again.  I put my finger to my lips to signify the need for complete silence while I concentrate on understanding the incomprehensible.

We ascend from the depths of darkness, doff our cloaks and follow to the tasting room.  At last.  This time our guide, uses a different tact.  Non-German speakers are seated in the back row of the spacious room.  The guide ambles on endlessly in German, then approaches us to mention, “This first vinegar is called Fig.”  Armed with that vital bit of information, we eagerly await the vinegar maidens, who pour excelsior from slender bottles into tall-stemmed, thin goblets hand-blown for this specific purpose.   They roam the room, passing out small portions to the jubilant crowd.  There are also small dishes of breads and chocolates strategically placed for you to cleanse the palate between samplings.

The first thing that hits you when you gingerly take a sip of Fig is its remarkably sweetness, with only the barest touch of sour.  In other words, it’s the most un-vinegary vinegar you’ll ever taste.  The second trial is of a darker variety, Angels Kiss the Night.  I’m sure the night felt pretty good about it, and I certainly did.  Next came Mozart, followed by Cassanova.  Followed by cheering and stamping of feet. All were sweet and all were distinctive. The vinegar maidens filtered through the crowd, topping us off.  Chocolates, which went particularly well with Mozart, disappeared.  All the bread was gone.  The now restless throngs shuffled off to the buying room.  They’d suddenly gotten a rebellious urge for more vinegar.

You may get all the info you need to schedule a vinegar tour at:  www.doktorenhof.de 

Tele:  06323-5505

Make Some Rosemary Vinegar!

Snowy rosemary

Worth waiting for!

Herbs are my gardening delight.  They put a smile on my face, like a cold beer in the hot summer, or a hot date in the cold winter.  I especially like Rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary) and grow a lot of it.   I like the aroma when I run my fingers through it.  Whoops, my mind drifted.  Stuck on the stuff about the cold winter.  Anyway, I just flat like the way a rosemary bush looks in my garden. Even snow covered, rosemary is beautifully verdant and redolent.  On those gray days of winter it perks the senses and carries the hope of spring. 

Hey, one more big, big reason I love rosemary.  For a thumb so brown it makes deadwood look lively, rosemary is a snap to grow, and propagate.   Containers.  Garden. Backyard.  Front yard.  As long as it’s got some sun and a smattering of water once in a while, it’s a happy, healthy plant.  The worst thing you can do to a rosemary plant is be too kind, and by that I mean over-watering.  If you’re container growing, let the soil get dry before you douse it.  And, for goodness sakes, don’t let your plant sit in water.

Just for convenience and because rosemary can take awhile to fill out and up, I plant mine from small, nursery grown plants.

I use rosemary for cooking.  A lot.  Maybe you do, too, but one flavor you may not have tried is rosemary-spiced vinegar.  Easy to make.

Take a gallon jug of apple cider vinegar (16 cups, 3.785 liters) and pour off 2 cups, or a little less than half a liter, saving it for another use.  Put two cups of pure water back in the gallon jug.  You’ve just reduced the acid content from 5% to around 4.3%.  I like my vinegar a bit tamer than 5% for salads.  Add a third cup of sugar (43 g) and stir until all the sugar dissolves.

Thoroughly wash and dry seven or eight healthy sprigs of fresh rosemary, the fresher the better.  When rosemary is cut and sits in the produce aisle, it loses some of its delightfully aromatic oil.  That and the price you pay for a few sprigs in a grocery store are two more reasons I like to grow my own.

Place the washed and dried sprigs of rosemary in the gallon jug of vinegar, water, and sugar solution.  Cap the jug and let it rest in a shady place for a couple of weeks.  Voilá!  You have just made more rosemary vinegar than you could use in a three star restaurant in a year.  I like to bottle it and give it as gifts.

Want a suggestion on how to use your newly made vinegar?  Read a previous post on making vinaigrette, but this time, substitute your homemade gourmet rosemary vinegar.  Yeah, yeah, you’ve just created a masterpiece.  Now wipe that smile off your face!