Raisin vinegar
Raisin vinegar is a popular vinegar in South Europe and Northern Africa. Dry raisins are rehydrated with water and worked to a very thin paste, which is fermented. This sweet wine is now fermented to vinegar. The taste is sweet and powerful aromatic. The same type of vinegar can be made from sweet wines. The best way of use is for fruit salads and for fish. Also for marinating lamb meat or young beef.
Rice vinegar
Rice vinegar is made from fermented rice or distilled rice. This vinegar is mostly common at Asia and for Asian cooking. Some vinegars have a high sugar content and taste sweet. A lot of producers use the sake cake, the waste material of the sake production. There are white, red and black rice vinegars available. In Asia shops you will find them as “Genmai Su”.
Sweet vinegar
Sweet vinegars are very popular. Most of the sweetness comes from concentrate, which is added to the ready vinegar. High quality sweet vinegars are made from very intensive and sweet wines. The prices are a lot higher than the vinegars made from concentrate, but they are truly worth it.
Whey vinegar
Whey as waste material of the cheese production can also be fermented to alcohol and produced to vinegar. Therefore it is necessary to work with a yeast strain named Saccharomyces lactis. The milk sugar can be added with dried whye, to get enough alcohol for this production. Because of the high milk acid content this vinegar has a little sauerkraut taste and is the best vinegar for the stomach. Its flavour is mild and aromatic with a little cheese note.
Wine vinegar
Wine vinegar is made from grape wine. The taste is typical and sometimes very intensive like the wine. Most of the wine vinegars have a light flavor and are not intensive due to the high dilution. The colour is like the colour of the wine. So red wine vinegar is red and not brown. For a typical wine vinegar it is necessary to take only high quality wines to get the real and typical flavor. The content of acetic acid is between 6 and 10 %. For small producers there are a lot of marketing possibilities with wine vinegars, like sweet wines or only one variety vinegars.
White vinegar
White vinegar or distilled vinegar is made from alcohol without any flavour and colour adding. It is cheap industrial vinegar and has no typical flavour. It is only sour.