Vinegars

This process sheet describes the production of vinegar, which, like many ancestral products, is probably the result of pure chance. Vinegar is the contraction of sour wine, with two successive operations, alcoholic fermentation and acetification, which is not fermentation. The base substrate for fermentation is a sweet juice derived not only from grapes, palm, apple, blackcurrant, cherry, etc., but also from rice, barley malt, beer and honey water.

Vinegar has been written about for as long as 5,000 years, and was originally used for its thirst-quenching and aseptic properties. It was also prized for its therapeutic virtues, as an anesthetic for operations and as a disinfectant for treating wounds. It wasn't until 1730 that a Dutch physicist, Hermanus Boerhaave, discovered the difference between alcoholic fermentation and acetification (transformation of ethanol into vinegar). Later, a German chemist, Georg Ernestus Stahl, clarified the role of ethanol in acetification. However, no one had yet identified the decisive role played by the micro-organism Acetobacter. It was discovered in 1822 by the Dutch botanist Christiaan Hendrik Persoon, who named it Mycoderma aceti, which is not a fungus, but a bacterium of the Acetobacter family. In 1864, Pasteur demonstrated the biochemical process for obtaining vinegar, using the microscope and his experimental vineyard in Arbois, Jura. To improve wine preservation, he recommended heat treatment at between 50 and 60°C, sheltered from the air: pasteurization was born.

Industrial production of vinegar began in Europe in 1965. By 2024, it was widely used as a preservative, flavoring agent and, in some countries, even as a health drink. Although vinegar is mainly used in the food industry, it also has applications in the health and cleaning sectors .