Bottling Your Own Grape Vinegar and Infused Vodka

Make our family’s annual tradition, Homemade Grape Vinegar (AND bonus Grape Infused Vodka!) from the garden with me! This homemade fruit infusion takes 2 days to prepare, and needs to ferment and infuse for 6 months. It’s a labor of love, but once finished, it’s a deliciously sour gut-healthy drink you can enjoy anytime for the rest of the year! It’s a great way to use up the bountiful grape harvest in the backyard we have.

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Making Your Own Homemade Grape Vinegar

Whenever we have big grape harvest, we make this Homemade Grape Vinegar, a healthy, gut-friendly fermented drink made with Niagara grapes grown in my parents’ backyard. It’s 3 ingredients, and takes about 2 days to prepare, and 6 months to ferment fully. The grapes in my parent’s backyard are particularly sour, so this grape vinegar comes out to the perfect level of tartness! It does take a bit of effort to make, but it’s a labor of love and memories together that my family and I enjoy often for the rest of the year.

Tasty Gut-Healthy Homemade Fruit Vinegar

This super healthy grape vinegar is both sweet and sour, and uses only 2 simple added ingredients: rock sugar and rice vinegar. Rock sugar is less processed, so it gives your vinegar a purer flavor as well. I love enjoying this fruit vinegar with a glass of ice, or even mixing it with tea for a nice boba drink. Homemade grape vinegar is packed with antioxidants, great for your skin and immune system. Plus, the fruit vinegar is fermented, so it has tons of probiotics that help with gut health and digestion.

Healing This Week with My Parents’ Garden Harvest

There’s nothing more healing that family time under the sun, harvesting all my parents’ labors of love. We’ve enjoyed a week full of delicious garden harvest, especially with the perfect combo of garden-fresh confit Grilled Cheese and Roasted Miso Tomato Soup the day before.

Today, I brought the cats over to garden with my mom and make our grape wine and vinegar, a yearly tradition since my parents started growing grapes in the garden.

Continuing Dad’s Love with Garden Vinegar Making

My parents’ garden is their pride and joy, filled with tomatoes, chives, garlic raspberries, and even kale. A few years back they decided to start growing grapes. Ever since then, we’ve began our annual tradition of making grape vinegar and infused wine together as a family.

My mom wasn’t sure if she wanted to keep the garden after my dad passed. It was their thing. After a summer of neglect, the garden still thrived, like a reminder from my dad to keep finding beauty in life, even after loss. As we’re sipping on the vinegar and wine from last year while harvesting the grapes he planted, it’s like he’s right there with us enjoying this family tradition, The garden and this vinegar is like a gift from my dad to my mom, because love doesn’t disappear—it transforms.

Bottling Your Own Grape Vinegar

Preparing grape vinegar is a 2 day process. First, I wash all the grapes and individually cut each off the vine to make sure there’s not other debris going in with our vinegar. I usually make sure to clean the grapes for a total of about 4 times. Then, the grapes are left to dry overnight.

To bottle, cut slits on each grape and add to the jars in layers of grapes and rock sugar. We use rock sugar because it dissolves very slowly, providing a gradual release of sugar. It turns sweet to sour slowly, ensuring a more consistent fermentation process. The jar is then sealed and left in a dark room to ferment for 6 months. Depending on the sugar content of grapes you used, this vinegar may vary in sweetness!

Using Vodka Instead for Grape Infused Vodka

My parents also made grape infused vodka instead of using the rice vinegar in this recipe last year. It looked super delicious so we did a quick taste test. The gentle tart and sweet flavors makes you forget that it’s vodka and not just a tasty juice. It’s DANGEROUSLY good – 10 out of 10!

To make your own grape infused vodka, use the same steps for the fruit vinegar, except replace the vinegar with vodka or your favorite hard liquor.

Grape Vinegar Ingredients

• Fresh Grapes
• Rock Sugar
• Rice Vinegar

How To Make Grape Vinegar

1. Wash and clean grapes, cutting each grape individually off the stems. Rinse and drain repeatedly until each grape is clean.
2. Air dry the grapes overnight.
3. Cut tiny slits bottom of each grape, remove the stem, and fill up to 1/3 of a clean, empty jar.
4. Add in a layer of rock sugar.
5. Fill another 2/3 with slit grapes, and layer another layer of rock sugar.
6. Add in rice vinegar, making sure to cover all the sugar and grapes.
7. Seal the jar with parchment paper and close it tight.
8. Leave in a dark room. After 6 months, remove the grapes and enjoy!

Make More With Your Garden Harvest with These Recipes!