Vinegars of the World

The story of microbial biotransformation is closely associated with vinegar production, which dates back to around 2000 years BC. However, among fermented foods, vinegar has been always considered a “poor” component: it is not a “food”, it doesn’t have high nutritional values, and it is produced by transformation of other more nutritive rich fermented foods. Vinegar is a condiment, but also a preservative and, in some countries, a healthy drink. It can be made by a two step fermentation of yeasts followed by acetic acid bacteria from almost any fermentable carbohydrate source: apples, pears, grapes, honey, syrups, cereals, hydrolysed starches, beer, and wine are all ideal substrates for the production of vinegar. Since vinegars is, with few exceptions, an inexpensive commodity, its production requires a low-cost raw material, such as sub-standard fruits, seasonal agricultural surpluses, various food processing by-products and fruit waste. However there are vinegars, so called spirit vinegars, obtained directly by acetic oxidation of alcohol obtained from distillation of fermented mashes or, in some countries, petrolchemical ethanol. Some western by-products of wood carbonization obtained by distillation of pyroligneous liquor collected during wood pyrolisis, are called “vinegar” and they are used as agricultural material, animal health product, cosmetic ingredients and folk drug in Japan and Est-Asia (Mu et al., 2003; Mu et al., 2006). These distilled solutions have not be considered as vinegar because no fermentative process occurs in their production. Other specialty vinegars are grouped as herbal or fruit vinegars. In this cases the name “X vinegar” doesn’t indicate the raw materials used in vinegar fermentation but the flavours added to obtain specific taste and characteristic sensorial features. Herbal vinegars consist of wine vinegars or white distilled vinegars, which may be seasoned with garlic, basil, tarragon, cinnamon, clove, or nutmeg. Fruit-flavoured vinegars are wine and white vinegars sweetened with fruit or fruit juice to produce a characteristic sweet-sour taste. Traditional vinegars are very expensive vinegar produced from regional foods according to well-established customs: balsamic vinegar of Modena from Italy; Sherry vinegar from Spain; Champagne vinegar from France etc. According to international definition of vinegar, in this book we considered only vinegar derived from a two stage fermentation process. However with many of the vinegars in Africa, Asia and Latin America, knowledge of the processes involved is poor and a comprehensive view of all different kinds of vinegars is impossible. Therefore it is likely that the worldspread vinegars give a very greater picture. Economy, technology and law about vinegar were described in this chapter.