The Apple Club Newsletter, Winter 2005, Page 2

Relish the sour taste that real vinegar brings to food.
Before God made man he made vinegar, according to German chemist and Munich patent lawyer, Gunter Wachtershauser.
Acetic acid, vinegar by its scientific name, was there at the origins of life, he says, helping to release energy from sea minerals. It also forms part of the Krebs cycle, the process that produces energy within human cells. This may explain why so many traditional cuisines make ample use of it, notably the noblest of Japanese sushi makers.
Wachtershauser is the theorist of "metabolic theory of evolution". Life on earth, he says, began when acetic acids came into contact with minerals such as iron and created the first acts of metabolism, by which he means the creation or release of energy in a form that fuelled the building of molecules that foreshadowed proteins.
It's easy to see how vinegar played the first blinder. This is the only product that would be naturally hanging around once properly formed. Vinegar is virtually indestructible, and it was there to perform life's miracle kick-start.
There should be dramatic and poetic metaphors for its death-defying power but no classicist anointed it great, apart from Hippocrates who used it for medicine, no romantic extolled its virtues, it never became mangled in Joycean syntax, nobody quite got round to beatifying its presence close to the human soul. Vinegar, we owe you one.
The health and whole food community lays a special claim to its prowess. Vinegar purges, it purifies and it provides amino acids, if you source the right kind. But at the same time we are in danger of underestimating its importance.
It could be the most important chap on the digestive block.
Vinegar has been used over the whole course of human history to purify foods before they are eaten. The use of vinegar in sushi is essential to a dish that contains raw fish. We are foolish enough to chance eating without the protection of such a powerful acid. The same can be said of any dish in which it takes a lead role.
The French, for example, eat salads once they have been doused in vinaigrette, whereas we fool around with south sea island dressing and similar sweet travesties naively believing that dressing is a matter of decoration rather than survival.
The question asked by the few is what type of vinegar is best. True vinegars are non-pasteurised, so we can eliminate most western spirit vinegars from this particular race. Wine vinegars seem to me too variable and uncared for whereas everyday balsamic is a gimmick.
Brown rice vinegar has a pleasingly petillante effect on the tongue. Cider vinegar is wonderfully fulsome.
My tip on the vinegar trip is, above all, avoid leaving it on the shelf. Take any excuse. Use it.

While on the topic of vinegar, I am pleased to announce that we now have a good supply of cider vinegar coming on stream, which is about time, as we started the fermentation about four years ago. Indeed, we recently had a few interesting customers, who were feeding it to cows to reduce bacterial cell counts in milk. By all accounts it worked, though it is difficult to be sure how. We also had some racehorse trainers who took it to make their horses run faster, but I'm afraid that they turned down my offer of a few tips instead of payment.
As well as pasteurised cider vinegar, we can supply living culture cider vinegar, as recommended in the previous article. There is currently a lot of interest in these living cultures, as they are like the probiotic yoghurt cultures in Actimel, which help to protect your internal system.

Vinegar

Karmine cider vinegar