Red wine, as well as being the Nectar of the Gods that adds a little warmth and not so forbidden pleasure to the lives of those who regularly drink deep from its cup, has a rich and rare culinary power the few of us ever fully explore.
While most of us have, at some point in our lives, added a dash of red wine to gravy to enrich its flavor or used it to make the sort of divine sauce that elevates any dish it’s served with to an entirely new level of taste, few of us ever think about using it to make vinegar.
In fact, the scarcity of red wine vinegar in most modern kitchens would tend to suggest that it’s seen as being something of a rarity and a secret that a lot of chefs seem to be incredibly reluctant to share.
It’s a shame that more of us don’t use red wine vinegar to cook with, as it’s imbued with a number of physical benefits that don’t just lift the taste profile of whatever dish you’re cooking but can also make you feel healthier and help you to see food and the way you prepare it in an entirely different light.
However, Muslim readers in particular need to be aware if red wine vinegar is Halal, and therefore allowed to be used in their cooking.
A healthy alternative to the more traditional and stereotypical ingredients in food, red wine vinegar has a rare potency and acidic punch that means that you’ll need to handle it with care and use it liberally and wisely until you’re used to it, and the exciting new world of palate-pleasing joy it can, and will submerge you in.
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The Delicate Luxury Of Red Wine Vinegar
It is, as you’ve almost certainly surmised, a condiment that isn’t to be taken lightly, although when it’s used to tenderize steak and slow-cooked brisket, it grants them a divinity that has to be sampled in order to be believed.
But it isn’t just meat that red wine vinegar can clutch tightly in its flavor-filled embrace, as it also makes a delicious salad dressing and adds a delightful acidic edge to just about any dish that you add it to.
If you can create a recipe in your culinary imagination, red wine vinegar can, and will make it better.
But where it really excels, is as a preservative for the more decadent everyday pleasures like Bojita olives where it slowly but surely smothers them in its delicate ambiance, as it soaks into every atom of every olive.
And the best thing about red wine vinegar is that it isn’t elusive, or impossible to find and it’s been hidden in plain sight, right under our noses on the shelves of supermarkets and stores all this time.
It’s always been there, it’s just that most of us choose, for whatever reason, to ignore its existence.
But after you’ve finished reading our guide to the health benefits that this miraculous vinegar possesses in abundance, we’re sure that you’ll change the way that you cook, and just like us will become devoted to the blessed vinegar of the vine.
Red wine vinegar is a rich source of resveratrol, an antioxidant that’s been proven to slow the physical signs of aging down, and can help to prevent wrinkles and the blemishes that give your real age away at a glance.
If you want to look younger, then you need to drink more red wine and cook with the vinegar made from the same vino.
Okay, so maybe we slightly over-egged the pudding when we called it a fountain of youth, as we all know that there is no absolute miracle cure that can slow the passage of time down or change the way that it irrevocably alters the biology of the human body.
Well, it might work if you bathed in red wine vinegar, but as nobody ever has (as far as we know) we can’t be certain that it will, or won’t work.
What we can say, with one hundred percent certainty, is that antioxidants can slow the visible signs of the aging process down, and red wine vinegar is swimming in them. Antioxidants, that is.
Possible Cancer Prevention
We’ve all been hit by the hammer blow of cancer at some point in our lives and have lost friends and family to this unflinching and uncaring monster, and the same antioxidant that helps to slow down the signs of the aging process, resveratrol is also a promising anti-carcinogen.
In fact, it’s shown so much potential that Japanese medical researchers have chosen to begin studying it in far more detail.
It isn’t a cure and it won’t stop the disease in its tracks or halt its progress, but it can help to prevent it from forming, which is a minor miracle in its own right. An anti-aging, anti-carcinogen that tastes better than it sounds?
What’s not to love? And even if the science is wrong (which it isn’t), and it doesn’t work (even though it does), at least you’ll have discovered the unbridled delight of red wine vinegar.
The Never-Ending Fight Against Diabetes And Obesity
How did that old saying go? An apple a day helps to keep the doctor away, wasn’t it?
Well, a glass full of red wine vinegar (watered down of course) a day, can help to keep obesity and diabetes at bay.
It’s been proven to reduce the number of triglycerides that course through your body, which in turn helps to reduce the chances that you’ll pile on the pounds, and the less weight that you put on, the healthier you’ll be.
Red wine vinegar is also an acetic acid, which can reduce your blood sugar by around five percent if it’s consumed regularly.
And while we’re not suggesting that you should swig it straight from the bottle, if you add a little to a glass of water in the morning and knock it back as fast as you can (although we would, at this point, like to add that red wine vinegar tastes a lot better than off-the-shelf supermarket branded vinegar does), you should start to feel a little better and brighter after a couple of weeks.
It can help to regulate your blood sugar, and that is never a bad thing.
A Potent Mixture Of Powerful Nutrients
The combination of wine and vinegar transforms this incredibly potent and powerful condiment into natural nutrient bullets that course through your body and challenge all of the everyday negative effects of pushing your body beyond its natural limits to a showdown of epic proportions.
And with iron and potassium, and the antioxidants that are ever-present in red wine, it’s a tasty way to ensure that your body gets a high concentration of the nutrients that it needs.
As well as the aforementioned antioxidants that help to heal the cell damage that walking around in the sun all day can do to your body.
Some over-eager devotees have tried to claim that red wine vinegar is a superfood, but we’re not sure that it falls into that category.
We do know that it tastes good, and makes you feel good though, and that’s good enough for us.
And as we used the word “good” three times in the same sentence, you know it’s going to do all sorts of amazing things to and for you.
It’s Good For Your Gut Too
There’s a probiotic revolution going on in the world out there, and unless you’ve been hiding under a rock you’ll know that probiotics can help to speed up digestion by breaking down the food you consume more efficiently.
And red wine vinegar is a fantastic source of probiotics, which means that anyone who is already a firm believer in or wants to try adding probiotics to their diet can make it easy by adding a splash or two of red wine vinegar to their menu.
There is, however, a catch.
If you want to ensure that you get the full red wine vinegar probiotic treatment, you’ll need to use unpasteurized vinegar, as the pasteurized version is probiotic-free.
Poison Protection
As you’ve probably already guessed, we’re not talking about the sort of poison that a Russian secret agent might slip in your coffee while you’re going about your daily business.
We’re actually talking about the bacteria responsible for food poisoning like E-coli, which can make you feel like death warmed up in a couple of minutes flat.
Acetic acid, or as it’s more commonly known, vinegar, can help to break down and destroy the bacteria responsible for food poisoning, and if you arm your gut with a daily dose of red wine vinegar, you can protect it from the germs that can wreak havoc on your digestive system.
Natural Inflammatory
We know that we keep returning to, and talking about resveratrol, but it’s a natural miracle cure-all that as far as we’re concerned, everyone should know about.
We’ve already established its anti-aging powers and how it’s been flagged in the fight against cancer, and it just so happens to also be a natural anti-inflammatory, which can help to reduce the pain and discomfort of joint and muscle problems.
It won’t cure them, but it can help to reduce the symptoms, which is half the battle in any war against chronic pain.
An Ingredient to Prevent Palpitations
That headline sounds like something a snake oil salesman or a carnival barker would say to grab your attention, doesn’t it?
We would apologize, but we’re not going to, as red wine vinegar, if it’s mixed with grape juice can actually reduce heart palpitations, and as anyone who has ever experienced them will happily tell you, they’ll happily drink anything that can help to stop them from happening.
And a grape and vinegar cocktail is far from the worst way to make yourself feel better.
Upping Your Calcium And Doubling Your Magnesium
Trying to ensure that you get the right amount of vitamins and minerals that your body needs in order to function at its optimal level is next to impossible.
But an easy way to make sure that it gets enough calcium, to increase and maintain your bone density, and magnesium, to aid in continued muscle development and growth, is by adding a little red wine vinegar to your daily diet.
If you knock back a small glass in the morning you’ll be good for the rest of the day with all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.
An Astringent Answer To Acne
Instead of taking it internally, you can always use red wine vinegar externally as an effective way to keep your skin clean and clear and reduce the inflammation and damage caused by acne.
As it is, essentially an acid that can and will destroy harmful bacteria, if you do have sensitive skin, you’ll need to be careful when you apply it, and strictly control how much you use as it could be just as harmful as it is beneficial.
But the good news is, it does work in the fight against acne.
An Antiseptic Atom Bomb
We’re sticking with external applications for a little while longer, as acetic acid (or as it’s more commonly known vinegar) is also an incredibly powerful antiseptic. If you need to bathe an open wound or treat a cut, you can always wipe it down with red wine vinegar.
We’re not going to lie, it will hurt, but at least it’ll clean the wound it’s being used to treat and prevent any harmful bacteria from running rampant and causing the sort of infection that no one wants to deal with or have to face.
The Reflux Reaction
Okay, the red wine vinegar world is split down the middle on this one. Half of it thinks that red wine vinegar is an effective cure for acid reflux and can help to alleviate the symptoms in next to no time, while the other half claims that it’s pure hokum.
Personally, we’re in the former camp as acid reflux used to make our lives a nightmare before we became red wine vinegar believers, and now we know the truth and we’ve seen the light. It helped us to control and curb our acid reflux, and it could do the same for you.
And Finally…
That’s it, folks, our condensed list of the health benefits of red wine vinegar. But don’t take our word for it, try it for yourselves and see how much better you feel after a couple of weeks…
Hi, my name is Emma Miller, and I am a wine enthusiast, and self-proclaimed oenophile from Ohio, in the United States. There is nothing better than tasting new types of wine, and over the years I have become somewhat of a wine connoisseur.
