The Joy of Sourcing Ingredients.

Debbie of the Mulberry Dyer has blogged about Cream of Tartar that is part of quite a few historical dye recipes, and of some modern ones, too. It seems that some dye retailers want their customers to buy the tartar in their own shops and not in the grocery store, so they say that the cream of tartar used for baking is the wrong chemical.

Well, that's nasty behaviour - since it isn't. Go read Debbie's blog about that. It also includes some more info on what the stuff is, chemically, and where it comes from. (Wikipedia has some more, and different, info as well.) The German name is much clearer about this - it calls the chemical "Weinstein", literally translating as "Wine Stone". And that's exactly how you can find it: As small crystals or stones on the bottom of wine barrels or sometimes wine bottles or sometimes even in grape juice. We get our grape juice as 5 l bag-in-box thingies, either red or white, from the Weingut Hechler - and I have found tartar in there once the bag was empty.

So if you need tartar for something... here is your perfect excuse to get some wine or good grape juice.