<p><font face="Verdana, Arial">Good Cooking wine or Cooking sherry refers to inexpensive grape wine or rice wine (in Chinese and other East Asian cuisine). It is intended for use as an ingredient in food rather than as a beverage. Cooking wine typically available in North America is treated with salt as a preservative and food colouring.[10] When a wine bottle is opened and the wine is exposed to oxygen, a fermentative process will transform the alcohol into acetic acid resulting in wine vinegar. The salt in cooking wine inhibits the growth of the acetic acid producing microorganisms. This preservation is important because a bottle of cooking wine may be opened and used occasionally over a long period of time. Dry Cooking wines are convenient for cooks who use wine as an ingredient for cooking only rarely. However, they are not widely used by professional chefs, as they believe the added preservative significantly lowers the quality of the wine and concomitantly the food made with that wine. Most professional chefs prefer to use inexpensive but drinkable wine for cooking, and this recommendation is given in many professional cooking textbooks as well as general cookbooks. Many chefs believe there is no excuse for using a low quality cooking wine for cooking when there are quality drinkable wines available at very low prices. Cooking wine is considered a wine of such poor quality, that it is unpalatable by itself and intended for use only in cooking. There is a school of thought that advises against cooking with any wine one would find unacceptable to drink.</font></p>
The history of cooking wine is the history of European cooking.

Since the beginning of recorded history, wine has been considered one of the essential ingredients in cooking. The ancient Greeks celebrated cooking wine and there are numerous references to its use in their meal preparation. When the Romans took up cooking with wine, they spread the practice throughout Europe and developed special varietals such as Marsala.

Using wine in cooking is so natural, it probably would have occurred naturally anywhere grapes could be grown and turned into wine. The secret to using cooking wine is simply making your favorite dishes taste to your liking. Wine can accent, enhance and intensify the flavors and aromas of food.

While fine chefs have adopted and refined the use of dry cooking wines, certain misconceptions have spread throughout the cooking world. For example, it is a mistake to believe that elegant dishes require expensive vintage wines for flavor. This is simply not true. Nor is it true that wine designed specially for cooking is inferior for drinking. This latter myth probably grew out of the fact that restaurants frequently salted wines used in cooking to discourage the kitchen staff from drinking them.

Adding salt to white, sherry, red and Marsala wines has actually proven beneficial. Once opened, these cooking wines do not need to be refrigerated or consumed immediately as is the case with unsalted wine. For practical cooks, this has become a great convenience.