I tasted my green cherry tomato-pearl onion pickles recently and I think they turned out very well.  So I am passing on the recipe. Note that this same method could be used for many veggies, such as green beans, cabbage and cauliflower.

Finally, after many days of waiting, the red wine vinegar in our barrel at Le Pichet is ready for use.

As described in an earlier post, last October we started a batch of vinegar using an old 3o liter oak Beaujolais Nouveau barrel as the receptacle.   Since then we have patiently added more wine (mostly young, fruity reds from the Cotes-de-Rhone and Languedoc)  to the barrel every 10 days, until it contained about 24 liters.  Although the barrel will hold 30 liters,  wanted to leave some air room at the top, as the vinegar “mother”, a sort of floating raft of beneficial bacteria that does the work of turning the alcohol in the wine into acid for our finished vinegar, needs free access to air to do its work.

Each week, we watched as the Ph level descended, indicating that the acid level was increasing.  Until finally last week, it reached a Ph level corresponding to an acidity of about 5%, the sign that it was ready for use.  We tapped of 6 liters of rich red, earthy vinegar, decanted it into clean wine bottles and corked it.  In theory, putting the vinegar in closed bottles, cut off from air, should stop it from becoming more acidic.  In theory.

Of course a taste test was in required. I was surprised how much richer and meatier our first try tastes than purchased red wine vinegar.  There is an almost smokey flavor that hits right away when you take a sip, before the acidity overpowers all the other flavors.   The  oak of the barrel and ripe flavors of young wine from the south of France  have melded nicely.

Although we will certainly want to use some of our vinegar right away, I think it will be fun to put 4 bottles away to see how it tastes in 6 months or a year.  In the mean time, if you notice more red wine vinegar than usual in our cooking, well I guess you will know what is behind it.

Here is a useful recipe for using extra Summer herbs when they are plentiful and cheap.  This recipe is based on one found in the book The Unprejudiced Palette by Angelo Pellegrini (which is a colorful read, by the way).  It is very easy and economical to make and the final product adds a burst of Summer flavor to salads throughout the year.

This recipe is intentionally lacking in specific quantities so that you can adjust to the amount of herbs you have on hand.  Similarly, other mixes of herbs and spices will be successful as well. Use this vinegar in vinaigrettes, sauce Bearnaise or Beurre Blanc.