Know Your Balsamic Vinegar

Vinegar comes from Old French “vin aigre” meaning sour wine.  Vinegar is made from various sources – wine, cider, malted barley, rice wine and fruits – but the best of the best is called balsamic vinegar.  Brewed for over 600 years, true balsamic – Aceta Balsamico Tradizionale – comes only from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, especially the towns of Modena and Reggio Emilia.  It is barrel-aged for a minimum of 10 years and as many as 25.  Small 3.5 oz bottles may cost well over $100.00 or more but only a few drops are needed to impart its powerful essence.  It is sometimes even sipped as a digestif.

Inexpensive (relatively) versions are sweetened and colored with brown sugar or caramel to mimic long ageing but even the best of these come from Modena.  The real thing requires elaborate formulation and ageing: 

1. Local grapes, usually Trebbiano but sometimes Lambrusco or Spergola, are crushed an juiced.  The unfermented juice, called must, is boiled over an open fire in copper containers until reduced by as much as half. 

2. The must is inoculated with ‘vinegar mother’, a gummy mixture of various bacteria and fungi, often culled from previous batches.  The mother ferments the sugars into acetic acid. 

3. The developing vinegar is aged in a succession of different barrels, coopered from oak, chestnut, mulberry, birch, juniper, ash or cherry – each imparting its distinctive flavor to the vinegar.  Stored in hot, drafty attics, the vinegar evaporates as it ages.  The missing vinegar is called the angels share.  Due to the reduce volume each barrel used is smaller in size.