About Stephanie's
VINEGARS

Many years ago we started making vinegars because of an abundance of fresh herbs in our garden and to reduce the fat content in our diet.

We love salads and found that the flavor for most of the great salad dressings comes from the vinegar and herbs even without the oil.

We read about using the vinegar used in preserving herbs to dress salads and deglaze a saute pan and tried making vinegars for our table.

We found that the recipes calling for the steeping of a few herb sprigs in vinegar doesn't produce a great flavor. We went to many gourmet food shows, tasted many vinegars and found the same unsatisfactory tastes.

After many trials we finally produced a great flavor! We used an enormous amount of herbs, hand bruised in an oak vat. We added fine wine and apple vinegar and let the vinegars extract the full flavor of the herb over an aging period of many months. The critical point is that the flavor is fully developed in the cask before it is put in the bottle.

The extraction process using large amounts of fresh herbs is slow and expensive. However, the flavor is enormously better than quickie herbal vinegars consisting of a few sprigs in a bottle, left to develop flavor in your pantry.

We make all of our herbal vinegars by slow aging of fresh herbs over a period of many months. No artificial flavors, synthetic herb oil or extracts are used.

In the preparation of a typical vinegar, we will hand bruise 4 bushels of herbs in a 50 gallon oak cask. Then add a blend of wine and apple vinegar and let it age for 3 months. During the aging process it will be inspected on a weekly basis and checked for acidity, flavor and aroma.

When the aroma and flavor reach its peak we then test by using the vinegar in our favorite recipes.