Maker of vinegar on mission to change minds one sour tastebud at a time
By Doug Meehan
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WORCESTER, Massachusetts (WCVB) — Vinegar may be a pantry staple, but for most, it may not be something you spend a lot of time thinking about. A Massachusetts entrepreneur thinks about it all the time. That is because he is making a lot of it.
“There is so much more to vinegar than what most people realize,” said Rodrigo Vargas, founder of American Vinegar Works in Worcester.
The Dartmouth-educated former investment banker started his handmade, small-batch vinegar company in 2019. He did so by first asking a question that had opportunity as part of the answer.
“When you’re talking to someone, and you say, ‘What’s your favorite vinegar?’ there is like a blank stare,” Vargas said.
Learning that the public’s perception of the sour liquid was rather sour, Vargas set out to create just the opposite.
Using locally brewed alcohol, like a porter beer from Mayflower Brewing Company in Plymouth, Vargas believes starting with quality ingredients means you finish with a more refined, better-tasting, quality product — a product that can take up to a full year to mature — compared to the two hours or two days it takes for the more mass-produced vinegars.
“Our vinegar, at a minimum, is going to take a month to two months of fermentation. That process changing over alcohol into acetic acid, and then we barrel age all of the vinegars for at least four months and many of them as much as a year,” Vargas said.
Reimagining and redesigning filtration techniques that date back to the early 1800s. American Vinegar Works is producing 6,000 gallons of vinegar a year in a historic 200,000-square-foot manufacturing space.
Vargas said that as the public learns more about what is happening at the facility, the potential growth for this Made in Mass product is massive.
“Vinegar is one of those magical products that have zero of all of the bad things you want. But somehow, (there) is magically this burst of flavors that transforms your dishes,” Vargas said.
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