Last week I posted the recipe for cherry drinking vinegar used to make a colonial drink called a shrub (concentrated syrup made from fruit, vinegar and sugar poured over ice and sparkling water). When you last saw me, I had pitted and mashed the cherries, covered them with apple cider vinegar and left them to sit at room temperature.
Today I added 1/2 cup of sugar and gently boiled the cherry – vinegar mixture for about an hour (I chose to do it outside on my trusty Weber grill because boiling vinegar has a somewhat pungent odor),
strained the mixture and began a series of taste tests. With some advice from my visiting sister-in-law K, I added about 1/4 cup more sugar and the drinking vinegar was ready to use. My first shrub was delicious — a perfect refresher for a summer afternoon.
The recipe made just shy of three cups of liquid and I am already imagining all kinds of other uses for this vinegar — in salad dressing, mixed with vodka … I think the possibilities are almost endless. The recipe says it keeps indefinitely; I am guessing it won’t be around that long!
knitting a life 
Sound delicious! And looks perfect in the bottle.
I never knew this! Drinks from vinegar? I have to try it, colors looks beautiful and all of us sudden now I have craving for one. Imaginative or sure!
What a refreshing drink idea. I wonder if shrubs are related to the Iranian sharbats, which are flavored syrups (usually fruit-based) that you can mix with water to make cooling drinks.
Adding vinegar to the mix makes it even more enticing, somehow. But then again, I have been known to drink the remnants of salad dressing from the bowl when no one is looking.
Somehow it seems kinda Early American.
Thank you so much for posting this recipe and the results… I just recently tried drinking vinegars at Pings a couple of weeks ago an am now hooked.. However, I don’t live in Portland which poses a problem because I don’t know of any place in town, where I live, that serves it… I have to say, I tried 3 of the types they had at Pings, the honey, the pomegranate, and the rhubarb… The Rhubarb was my favorite, by far…. Cherry sounds pretty good though…
As far as I know, you can use any fruit that you like. Just adjust the sugar to match the sweetness you want in the final product. Hope you give it a try!
Thanks for posting the recipe and pics. Where did you get the great bottles for the finished product?
Those bottles came with some beautiful vinegars in them. I think that one had a tomato vinegar in it. I couldn’t stand to toss them and they have come in handy for lots of other things!
Shrubs are indeed early american and are vinegar and rum (or possibly vodka.) You can buy premade fruit vinegar in Asian grocers. I bought a lemon vinegar today for $6.99 in the Chinese aisle.NPR’s splendid Table did a peice on this earlier this month. I made a raspberry vinegar from a New York Times article this winter.