Meet American Vinegar Works

We are a small team of dedicated craft vinegar makers. Our obsession with great vinegars led us to partner with local universities to recreate unique vinegar machines using the original designs from the 1800s. Our small batch vinegars are slow fermented, barrel aged, and bottled raw by hand right here in our historic mill building in the heart of New England. We are proud of our thoughtfully fermented vinegars and truly hope they will become your favorite vinegars as well.

A small team making vinegar slowly

American Vinegar Works is a working vinegar mill in Worcester, Massachusetts. We ferment and barrel-age everything we sell on site, in batches limited by how many oak barrels we can keep occupied for months at a time.

Why we do it the slow way

Almost all vinegar sold today is made by forcing air through a tank of alcohol until it converts, which can be finished in under a day. It is efficient and it produces acetic acid with very little character. We use the 1823 drip method instead: slow fermentation, then months in oak. The barrel is where the sharp edge comes off the acid and the fruit behind it develops. It is a slower, more expensive way to make a cheap ingredient, and it is the entire reason our vinegar tastes different from the supermarket bottle. Our process walks through what actually happens in the barrel room.

What we make

Wine vinegars, raw apple cider vinegars with the mother, malt vinegars fermented from real beer, junmai rice vinegar, barrel-aged sherry and mead vinegar made from honey. Some of it is seasonal and made in single-barrel runs, like the wild-foraged ramp vinegar. The whole range is in the vinegar collection, and the smallest runs are in nano batch vinegar.

Where we ended up

Our work has been written about by the New York Times, America's Test Kitchen and Epicurious, and our vinegar is stocked by specialty grocers around the country. You can find those on the store locator, or read the press coverage.

If you have not tried it

Most people who think they dislike vinegar have only had the industrial kind. If that is you, start here. Otherwise a mini bottle sampler set is the low-risk way in, and start here is the short orientation. Orders over $85 ship free within the contiguous US.