When vinegars give a second life to fine wines

In the middle of the Banyuls vineyards, with the sea below, barrels are lined up outside. Inside, there's wine. But only half. Here, we're looking for what winemakers dread: the development of acetic bacteria favored by contact with air.

Chandra Brune is a vinegar-maker. Since 2022, this thirty-something has taken over the legendary La Guinelle vinegar factory, created twenty-five years ago by wine enthusiast Nathalie Lefort, in the Pyrénées-Orientales region of France. When I was 18, I was looking for a job and ended up there by chance," says the former employee. I fell in love with the place. I was stunned by this job that no longer exists. I never left. "

Whereas the industry produces vinegar in 24 hours thanks to various additives and temperature control, the La Guinelle vinegar factory takes the time to ferment naturally with its own acetic bacteria. It's inherent to the place, like the indigenous yeasts in wine. "We accompany it according to our desires. Sometimes, out of two barrels filled on the same day, one takes six months to become vinegar, the other four. Why does this happen? We don't know," marvels Chandra Brune. This is followed by a few more months' rest in the dame-jeannes to round out the vinegar obtained.

"It's not something you forget in a corner and do over the leg. The bacteria don't like extreme temperatures. And there's a good wine to select at the outset." The first imperative is that this wine should not be frozen by sulfites, so that it has the luxury of continuing to evolve. And above all, it must be a very good wine, one that you and I enjoy drinking," she explains. I never pick up a batch with defects. Vinegar is a powerful aromatic revelator. The bad in a wine is exacerbated in its vinegar version." Luckily, so is the good.

All it takes is a glass in a restaurant or a meeting with a winemaker to raise the question: how might this delicious wine evolve? Ephemeral vinegar cuvées are born from Chandra Brune's discoveries. A magnificent Riesling entrusted by Alsatian Jean-Pierre Frick, Lise and Bertrand Jousset's Chenin that will give up all its minerality to the vinegar, or 200 bottles (to be opened by hand) of an oxidative wine from the 1977 region, with notes of walnut, caramel and coffee. "Imagine a vinegar with that!" she enthuses.

The personality of the raw material

Several pilgrims have climbed up to the hamlet of Cosprons to sample La Guinelle's savoir-faire. Inspiration has borne fruit far from Banyuls. In Maine-et-Loire, Mathilde Cousin uses the family wine of winemaker Olivier Cousin to make her vinegars. A white made from Chenin and a red from old Cabernet Franc vines, as well as various macerations according to the harvest. All spend four to five months in the attic. The method is known as the d'Orléans method, revived from a time when hundreds of vinegar factories were set up to produce wine.

In Belgium, no one had turned their nose up to artisanal vinegar since the last century. Daphné de Crombrugghe launched her Sainte-Odile vinegar factory in 2023. "We consider oils, even salts or peppers, but why is vinegar the poor relation of gastronomy?" Initially enamored of balsamic vinegar in the ancestral method she discovered in Italy, she later joined La Guinelle to train. "I fell in love with the grape harvest. The time spent in the vines, all those great winemakers passing by, my first emotions in the glass. It was a whole new world opening up."

Daphné de Crombrugghe returns to Brussels with the importance of raw material in her luggage, and a small bottle of La Guinelle vinegar made from a Jura yellow wine. "That's what I want to do," she says to the Cantillon brewery, a world institution when it comes to lambics (acidic beers that ferment spontaneously without the need to add yeast). Despite production in precious quantities, the Brussels brewery is enthusiastic: "Whatever you want." Brasserie Drie Fonteinen and the Condroz cider house complete her list of suppliers. "When you taste my vinegars, I want you to find the producer's touch and the personality of the raw material. The acidity must not overwhelm the freshness of the cider or the roundness of the kriek."

As the vinegar-maker doesn't enjoy the sugars and intense fruitiness of the sunny wines of the south, she turns to cuvées with pronounced expressions: "For example, I look for oxidative beers that are aromatically powerful, or ciders with broad shoulders to counter the acidity, like compote ciders where sometimes a little sugar remains. "Beyond the plate, it ' s also possible to enjoy these vinegars as drinks. Schrub, a kombucha-like drink, involves mixing a few centilitres of vinegar in the bottom of a glass with sparkling water and ice. The ideal aperitif for discovering our favorite vintages in their second life.

Three vinegar factories not to be missed

La Guinelle vinegar factory, in Port-Vendres and Banyuls

The muscatel vinegar (from a Domaine du Vieux Chêne wine) in the permanent range is bursting with generous fruitiness thanks to the region's sweet grapes. Its honeyed taste surrounds an electric acidity (with acetone notes that won't please everyone). From an older wine from the same estate, a rivesalte from 2011, comes a vinegar so gourmand, somewhere between apricot and walnut, that we'd happily sip it with a spoon for itself.

• Muscatel vinegar (11 euros per 25 cl)
• Old Rivesaltes vinegar (18 euros per 50 cl)
• 20 rue Saint-Sébastien, 66650 Banyuls-sur-Mer
• www.levinaigre.com

Domaine de Rancy, Latour-de-France

Brigitte and Jean-Hubert Verdaguer, winegrowers in the Pyrénées-Orientales, are in the process of handing over Domaine de Rancy to their daughter Delphine. From their wine, rich in the grape's natural sugars and with its distinctive air-ageing profile, they produce their own amber-colored vinegar. Magnificently balanced, it features caramel, coffee and dried fruit, with finesse and concentrated sweetness. Use as a balsamic vinegar.

• Rivesaltes rancio vinegar (16 euros per 50cl)
• 8 place du 8 mai 1945, 66720 Latour-de-France
• www.domaine-rancy.com

Sainte-Odile vinegar factory, Brussels

Our favorite is lambic vinegar, a perfect reflection of lambic's intense salinity and delicious, deep acidity. It conveys notes of toast, roasted meats and soy sauce. It's a vinegar that seems born for kitchen gestures, capable of enhancing a sauce or deglazing a pan-fried vegetable. For drinking vinegar, try lambic vinegar with fresh raspberries, which scents the fruit with superb fidelity.

• Lambic vinegar (12 euros per 25 cl)
• Lambic raspberry vinegar (14 euros per 25 cl)
• rue du Grand Hospice 7, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
• www.sainteodile.com