Red wine vinegar is an incredibly useful , with its distinctively puckery aroma and flavor that complements salads, marinades, and more. But if you or someone for whom you cook totally avoids alcohol, you might be wondering if red wine vinegar contains any — after all, it has "red wine" in the name. Indeed, red wine vinegar, by virtue of how it's made (it does derive from red wine) may contain trace amounts of alcohol, though the stipulates that it can be no more than 0.
5% alcohol by volume. This is such a small amount that red wine vinegar is considered non-alcoholic, and you cannot get intoxicated by cooking with it (or even drinking it, if you were moved to do so). However, despite the fact that you cannot get drunk on red wine vinegar, you could possibly fail a breathalyzer if you consumed enough and were administered a test soon after.
How is red wine vinegar made? To understand why red wine vinegar contains some small amount of alcohol in it, you must look at how it's made. This purply-red liquid has been produced by humans for over 5,000 years, originating in ancient Babylon, with recipes passed down to the Greeks and Romans. From there, it continued through the centuries until the Medieval French perfected the "Orléans method" (so named for the city located about 80 miles south of Paris, from which it originated).
It is not too terribly unlike the methods used today; in both practices, bacteria is introduced to red wine (for modern red wine vinegar-making, the bac.
