Distilling old wine

[Evan]

I have access to a lot of old wine that is unsuitable for drinking and was wondering if I could distill it. If wine has started to turn to vinegar is it still suitable for this purpose?

[Usge]

Don't know about vinegar...but I've distilled some old "bad", corked, etc..wine and put it on heavy toast oak cubes and it turned out really good.

[ArkyJ]

Had some grape and rasberry that had been setting around for over 5 years. No vinegar, but she turned out to be my first and my very best and it's almost gone. WWAAAAaaaaaaaa!!!!
ArkyJ

[athiril]

Acetic Acid (Vinegar) has a higher boiling point than water, Acetaldehyde around 20 celsius.

So, you should be just fine and dandy with good distillation technique same for regular spirits. Assuming you have a reasonable amount of ethanol left.

You could also use bicarb to neutralise the acetic acid if you really wanted to.

[Evan]

I wasn't aware that acetic acid had a higher boiling point than water. I've read about using baking soda to neutralize acetic acid, but was warned to use it only after the stripping run because adding it to your wash could lead to the production of ammonia. Is that true?

[Dnderhead]

""adding it to your wash could lead to the production of ammonia. Is that true?""
yes then you could end up with a nice blue distilled.but with some limitations
this is because left over nitrogen in wash with a alkaline base,makes ammonia
so if you dont add enough to make your wash alkaline like when adjusting the wash PH
your safe.as you would not want your wash over PH 5.5 anyway.

[Evan]

Thanks for all the help guys, I'm going to give it a try.