I found this book to be fascinating. It's sad, but the books I read that are dedicated to one type of food, usually includes in it the sad story of counterfeit food. Olive oil, cheese and now vinegar have all been made slightly suspect in my eyes and now I need to make sure I REALLY know where my vinegar is coming from.

But I digress. If you are into "food porn" in your cookbooks, this will be gratifying for you. The pictures are GORGEOUS. You can tell the author cut his chops by being a food photographer for other cookbooks. His cookbook is done very well, as is to be expected.

The reason for the four and not five stars is because, while recipes were included and the end explained what you needed to make your own vinegar, sometimes the recipes didn't tie into what was being talked about. For example, he would be discussing this amazing dish that a specific chef made with a particular vinegar, going on and on about how great it was, then BAM! The next item in the book was a recipe...but not for that dish. It wasn't all of the time, so sometimes you got the recipe for that mouth-watering sounding dish and other times, bait and switch.

Also, the mini-sections would be about different restaurant owners and chefs, but some people would have what I would consider a chapter of information, and others only one paragraph, with very little differentiation between the sections. It just seemed to skip from person to person with no obvious break in-between. It was awkward to read, because I had to keep turning back to see if this was part of the last paragraph or not.

Not a bad book, just could have maybe used smoother or more obvious transitions from chef to chef. The recipes all looked fantastic, the pictures were gorgeous and I had NO IDEA vinegar was so big in so many different countries. Germany, Japan, America, Italy, to name but a few. I liked how the book was divided by region, going into each locations specialties.

4.5, rounded down to 4 stars due to the somewhat clunky transitions, which may have been amended, as I read an eARC and not a finished copy. Completely worth getting, if only for the recipes and the instructional on how to make your own vinegar. Highly recommended!

My thanks to NetGalley and ABRAMS for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

Wonderful step by step recipes with addition of vinegar throughout the world and how to make your own vinegar ........wonderful .....

Get ready to pucker but better yet you will be taken on a thorough history and around the world understanding of the most loved fermented staples. I learned so much and this will make the perfect gift for your favorite foodie!

Passions are passions in particular in culinary sector. You can fall in love for pasta, pizza, appetizers, veggies, meat, desserts, chocolate. Sometimes you can fall in love for...vinegar.
It's what happened to Michael Harlan Turkell. As he tells in the book everything started because of a bottle of wine not anymore so....good.

Since there he decided to learn much more about vinegar and the immense world of vinegar, that it is pretty diversified and rich of flavors.
In the latest book published by ABRAMS this Aug 8th: Acid Trip Travels in the World of Vinegar with recipes from Leading Chefs, Insights from Top Producers, and step-by-step Instructions on How to Make your Own you will learn everything about vinegar, production and importance of this aliment in a daily base.


This trip has been long and the author and his wife visited many countries, for understanding much better what vinegar means for a country.
From France to Italy discovering in this second case the Aceto Balsamico a specialty in past from Modena known only in recent years in all the italian territory, and then Japan, Austria, North America meeting the most important producers of vinegar like also Chefs in grade to suggest the best recipes created with vinegar. In every section-country the best recipes you can ask for for stimulate your appetite and desire of eating a real treasure for the palate.

Not only Mr Turkell tasted these different sort of vinegar and recipes in many wonderful countries, but for the joy of all of us he returned home from all these different places and flavors, plenty of recipes to share with readers in this cookbook for creating with vinegar the best recipe for every occasion and taste.

And...If you want to try to produce your own vinegar, all the instructions for living this adventure in first person!

Beautiful pictures as always! I know that you will fall in love for this new temptation by ABRAMS.

I thank NetGalley and ABRAMS for this eBook.

I must have misread the book description. While I thought I would be learning how they make different vinegars around the world, instead I got a collection of recipes from various world cuisines, all utilizing vinegar as an ingredient. Not terrible, but not at all what was expected.