FAQs

It’s a malt vinegar made from scratch in Dornoch. I take organic, heritage barley wort from Dornoch Distillery, ferment it with my own yeast, turn it into vinegar in a Schützenbach generator, and age it in the distillery’s ex-whisky casks. Grain to bottle, all on one site.

In short, bacteria called Acetobacter eat ethanol and convert it into acetic acid. So, anything with alcohol in it – wine, cider, beer – can make vinegar. Have you ever left a glass of wine out for a bit too long and it’s gone a bit sour? No me neither. But if it did last that long, those very Acetobacter are in the air getting to work changing alcohol to acid.

There are three commercial ways of making vinegar:
1. Orléans method – Traditionally wine was transported by boat in wooden casks, and inevitably some of it would sour. A river port in France called Orléans became home to widely regarded “vinaigriers” who came up with a highly guarded, secret way of further allowing this spoiled wine to turn into high quality vinegar. The bare essentials of this method is to leave some wine in a cask for several months, to years, and you will have vinegar. One description has 50 litres of wine added to 100 litres of older vinegar already in the barrel, with the rest kept as air space.

2. Schützenbach method (this is what we use) – in 1720 a dude called Boerhaave discovered if he poured alcohol over a barrel full of grape stems it sped the conversion from wine to vinegar up considerably, from months to weeks. Turns out that acetobacter really like oxygen! Then in the 1800s a German scientist called Schützenbach streamlined the process and used beechwood shavings to great effect. The modern version is to spray the alcohol using a pump and a timer over a bed of “packing material” that gives a home to the bacteria while allowing oxygen to flow through it. I use a mix of zeolites, a small pebble with immense internal surface area which don’t impart any flavour to the vinegar, and larch wood wool, grown and milled in the UK for vinegar producers.

3. Submerged acetifiers – Usually made by the company Frings, this is what most big scale vinegar producers use. Huge stainless steel tanks with stirrers, heat and cooling control, carefully measured forced oxygen and other industrial bells and whistles that produce vinegar in a matter of hours to days. The vinegar is produced in enormous quantity, requiring constant monitoring and is completely one dimensional and overly acetic, to my taste.

True vinegar is made from alcohol that has been fermented into vinegar. So it requires an alcohol to be made first, using yeast to convert sugar into alcohol. This is the first fermentation. The acetic conversion of alcohol to acid is the second fermentation. The acetobacter eat the alcohol and turn it into acetic acid.

A lot of “vinegar” makers will buy bulk vinegar which could be distilled vinegar (yuck) or mass produced apple cider vinegar (slightly better) then put fruit or herbs into it. This isn’t making vinegar, this is making an infused vinegar. Dornoch Craft Vinegar is a true double fermented malt vinegar made with patience and honesty.

It’s a malt vinegar, but with a sweetness, oak flavour and more complexity than your normal malt vinegar.

Balsamic vinegar is made using particular grapes, cooked for a particular amount of time to reduce them to a must, then aged in a series of casks that get smaller and smaller called a batterie over a number of years. This makes the vinegar very sweet and syrupy but takes a very long time to do. I have some malt balsamic started, but it will be about seven years before it is ready!

It’s made slowly, in small batches, and aged in whisky casks rather than bottled straight away. It’s also unpasteurised, so it’s still a living vinegar. The result has more going on: warm, malty and rounded from the wood and the live part of it has had health benefits that have been recorded for thousands of years.

It’s a way of ageing where casks are arranged in tiers and topped up over time, so older vinegar blends with newer batches. I use a three-tier Solera, which means every bottle carries a component of every batch I’ve made, unless it’s a single-cask release.

Bright and sharp like any good vinegar, with a malty depth and a rounded character from the casks. It’s a drizzle with a difference.

It tastes like vinegar first: bright, malty acidity. The ex-whisky casks add oak and some of the same fruity esters you’d find in a dram, which is where the depth and long finish come from. Whisky drinkers tend to recognise the family resemblance; if whisky isn’t your thing, you won’t find it on your chips. If you do want the whisky bar in a bottle, try the peated vinegar.

Anything that could do with a lift. Chips, obviously. But also salad dressings, a splash in a sauce, or deglazing a pan after searing meat. Just as good on a haddock supper as in a monkfish risotto.

Yes. Because the vinegar is unpasteurised, the mother culture is still in there, and it can form cloudy strands or a soft layer over time. It’s a natural part of a living vinegar. You can strain it out or leave it be.

Keep it somewhere cool and out of direct sunlight with the lid on. There’s no need to refrigerate it.

A very long time. Vinegar’s acidity preserves it, so it doesn’t go off the way most food does. Keep it sealed, somewhere cool and out of direct light, and it’ll keep for years. Once it’s open it stays safe to use, but the aroma slowly softens and changes as it meets air, so when you’re down to half a bottle, it’s best to blast through the rest. This vinegar is made to be used! It’s unpasteurised and unfiltered, so you may see a little sediment, or occasionally a soft, jelly-like disc forming on top. That’s vinegar mother, and it’s harmless: strain it out or leave it be.

Because it doesn’t need one. Vinegar’s natural acidity preserves it, which is why UK food labelling rules exempt it from carrying a best-before date. It won’t go off. Being living and unpasteurised, it will slowly keep developing in the bottle, but that’s part of its character, not a sign it’s past its best.

The first bottles launch in November 2026. Sign up to the newsletter at the bottom of this page and you’ll be the first to know.

I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch and tell me a bit about your kitchen or shop.

Just me, Maddy Norval, working from a converted shipping container at Dornoch Distillery. The lovely team at Dornoch Distillery make the malt wash, but the rest of the alcoholic fermentation, acetic fermentation, ageing, bottling, racking, labelling, shipping, social media and so on and on is a one woman team! Read the full story.