Balsamic Vinegar: Some Facts and a Little History

• Twenty-five years ago, balsamics were just getting known in the U.S.; tradizionales weren’t even available for purchase but had to be given as gifts from Italian friends. Most people have had only the imitation product, which is most of what is sold in our nation’s supermarkets.
• Balsamic vinegar is a specialty of the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, specifically from the provinces of Modena and Reggio Emilia. It is often credited as originating in the city of Modena and today it is a protected with a D.O.P. designation—only vinegar made in the region can be called balsamic.
• Balsamic vinegar has been made since at least the 11th century.
• In its early days, balsamic vinegar was very available only to the nobility and the artisans—themselves aristocrats—who made it. It was believed to be a miracle cure for everything from a sore throat to labor pains (the name balsamic, from balm, is derived from its purported medicinal properties, including its use as a protection against the plague).
• Made from local grapes and aged in local woods, for centuries it was made privately on individual estates and farmsteads, and only in the last few decades has become a commercial product. It has been included in the trousseaux of the brides of Modena since its creation—and it still is. The precious black liquid, 50 and 100 years old and even older, is kept in locked cupboards and dispensed by the dropperful. And even the “youngsters,” just 12 or 25 years of age, are coveted.
• As a homemade product, it was not commercially available in the U.S. until the 1970s. At that time, two factors—the ethnic food explosion and the turn of focus to the refined cuisine of northern Italy over the familiar immigrant meatballs-and-spaghetti fare of the south—brought elegant balsamic vinegar to the consciousness of fine chefs and gourmets.
• By the 1980s, newspapers nationwide were publishing recipes for home cooks: anyone could make chicken breasts with balsamic vinegar or glaze salmon with balsamic. Not the 100-year tradizionale, mind you, but with the commercial brands that had also become popular in Italy, and were being imported as well as replicated at home.
• By the 1990s, lovers of fine food became aware that Parmigiano-Reggiano was not something to be grated over pasta, but perhaps the world’s greatest cheese, to be enjoyed with drops of rare balsamic vinegar; and that anything—even melon and prosciutto—could be accorded new excitement with a few drops of good balsamic.
• But with the good came the bad: the surging popularity of balsamic brought unauthentic “authentic balsamics” as well as an ocean of imitation balsamics—sugared and colored cheap vinegar masquerading as the real thing. To protect the reputation and value of authentic balsamic vinegar, in 1979 a marketing and exportation consortium was formed in Modena led by Ferdinando Cavalli, a local producer. The name “Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena” has been protected since 1983.

What is it?

Balsamic vinegar is an aged reduction of white sweet grapes that are boiled to a syrup and then aged for 12 years or longer using the solera system, which involves transferring the vinegar among a series of barrels of decreasing size each year, culminating in a finished product at the end of the line.

As with most vinegar, true aceto balsamico starts out as must (unfermented juice). Unique from other vinegars, local sweet white grapes with a high sugar content—trebbiano and spergola varietals—are harvested as late as possible, and often left in the sun for further ripening to increase the sugar level. (Sometimes lambrusco and other grapes are used in small quantities.) They are then crushed and pressed, and the juice (the must) is allowed to sit until fermentation begins. Unlike other vinegars, balsamic does not come from wine, but from grape juice that has never been allowed to ferment into wine. At the very start of fermentation, the juice is filtered and poured into large, open copper cauldrons.

The grapes are brought to a boil in and slowly simmered over a wood fire and cooked until the water content is reduced by one-third to more than one-half. This takes from 24 to 30 hours. The juice is cooled, allowed to settle, and is then combined with an older balsamic vinegar containing active bacteria cultures, or a “mother” composed of various yeasts and bacteria, that assist in turning the juice into acetic acid (vinegar).

How Balsamic is Aged

Aging is the second component that separates balsamic from all other vinegars. The cooked must is then placed in the first of a series of progressively smaller wooden casks, called the “batteria,” to age.

The batteria can consist of as few as five barrels (three for condimentos) and as many as ten, depending on the taste of the producer. The woods that can be used are acacia, ash, cherry, chestnut, juniper, mulberry, oak and walnut. Tradizionale balsamic must be aged in five of these woods.

The vinegar first goes through alcoholic fermentation and then acetic oxidation (In other words, the sugars turn into alcohol which turns into acid which converts the liquid into vinegar).

Each year the vinegar is decanted and transferred to different casks of progressively smaller size so that it can absorb unique flavor from each of the woods. This is called “topping off,” and takes place in January and February. Again, it is the skill of the artisan that determines exactly how much is decanted.

For the rest of the year, the vinegar is left to age. Each year it reduces in volume through evaporation, concentrating as it ages and resulting in a rich, syrupy viscosity and aromatic bouquet. The barrels are filled to two-thirds to three-quarters capacity to abet evaporation and condensation.

For years the vinegar goes through what is called maturation in the middle part of batteria, then enters the aging phase in the last few barrels. The process is the same for an industriale or a condimento, but the aging period is shorter—at least three years for an industriale; condimentos can be six years or longer (and fine ones are aged for 12, 15 and 20 years, just like tradizionales). For tradizionales and for older condimentos, the ultimate step is decantation into the smallest barrel, where the vinegar rests and matures.

The process of knowing when to transfer the vinegar to the next barrel is knowledge passed on from artisan to artisan through the generations. While today there are some 120 commercial producers of balsamic vinegar, at home vinegar is made by the women of the household and the aging process occurs in the attic of the household, the barn, or the acetaia (vinegar house), for larger commercial ventures.

The attic was an ideal aging location for traditional balsamic vinegar because of the extreme fluctuations in temperatures. Unlike wine, cheese and other products that require consistency of climate (and are aged below the ground in cellars to achieve that consistency) the aging process of balsamic vinegar actually benefits from the alternating summer heat and the winter cold. Heat promotes fermentation and acetification, and cold allows resting and maturation. This “natural chemistry” allows balsamic vinegar to develop and improve for decades, even centuries.

With an evaporation rate of about 10 percent each year, 100 liters (26.4 gallons) of grape must will become 15 liters (4 gallons) of vinegar after twelve years of aging. In home production, when the flavor is found acceptably intense, the vinegar is sealed in a final small wooden cask; commercially, it is bottled in glass flasks.

While the quality of the balsamic depends on the quality of the grapes, the length of the aging process, the final flavor depends on the timing of the transfer of the vinegar to the ever-smaller barrels, and the wood from which the barrels are made. These wood types and the stage of the aging in which they are used influence the aromas of the balsamic vinegar; it is the knowledge and skill of the artisan that ultimately makes the greatest balsamic. As with winemaking, vinegar masters aim for particular flavors: a balance of juniper, oak and cherry wood flavors, e.g.