Balsamic Vinegar:
Magic Potions That Stir Food to Life
Excerpts from an article by Molly O'Neill in
The New York Times - February 17, 1999

HEALDSBURG, Calif. -- Like a nurse bending over cradle after cradle of sleeping infants, Paul Bertolli hovered tenderly over the oak barrels lining a loft above a small barn in Sonoma County.
 
The 300-square-foot attic, banked with neat wood bunks of barrels, has been a nursery of sorts, the place where Bertolli is raising aceto balsamico in the ancient Italian manner.
 
It is winter, the season of sleeping vinegar and the time of year when sturdy dishes beg for a splash of the mysterious, sweet and sour elixir that was elevated to an art form in the Po Valley.
 
From a tidy bunghole in the barrel, Bertolli inhaled. As he exhaled, his breath looked like smoke in the air. The chill, he said softly, had caused the vinegar to precipitate used bits of bacteria and yeast, causing the particles to settle and the liquid to clarify. Even when it is sleeping, aceto balsamico is alive and changing.
 
Unlike ordinary wine vinegar, aceto balsamico is made from crushed grapes, which ferment, acidify and oxidize as the liquid ages and evaporate in smaller and smaller barrels for at least 12 years. The vinegar is thick, more a condiment or a cordial. Infusing it with the essence of different woods, shepherding the natural sweet and sour flavors, is one of humankind's greatest culinary balancing acts.
 
The balsamico allure has prompted a deluge of imitators in specialty shops and supermarkets across the country. But a tasting by the writer showed that modern mass production has not simulated the balsamic vinegar made and aged traditionally.
 
Vinegar sold as balsamic can be as sweet and thick as port or terribly astringent, muddy or flat. Neither price nor package guarantees quality. In one case, there was no discernible difference between a $36 bottle and one that cost $2.99.
 
Aged aceto balsamico, at its best, has toasted caramel tones, hints of spice and honey and a soft, mellow acidity. The aged vinegar was described in centuries-old Italian archives as a tonic, a digestive, a condiment and a liquor.
 
The word "balsamico" is thought to relate to balm, to connote a healing potion. Among connoisseurs in Italy and the United States, serious balsamic vinegar is tasted like a fine old port.
 
But in the United States, the venerable condiment is most often diluted with ordinary vinegar in commercial bottles and used for salads. "Our customers don't want connoisseur quality," said Steven Jenkins, an owner of the Fairway markets in New York. "Most of them are looking to make an interesting vinaigrette."
 
In 1973, Marcella Hazan, the cooking teacher and author, introduced America to the condiment from the provinces of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Cooks seized on the condiment to add a subtle sweet and sour note to soups and stews, to bring out sweetness in winter vegetables, to elevate salads and to make pale, hard strawberries resemble ripe fruit.
 
As a leading ingredient in the pastafication of America, balsamic vinegar coincided with an appetite for leaner food; it adds a toasted depth to steamed and grilled dishes, a note of mystery to salsa, chutney and slaw. The Japanese use well-aged balsamico as a variant on soy sauce with sushi and sashimi.
 
Almost all the balsamic vinegar sold in the United States is imported from Italy, said Darryl Corti, an owner of Corti Brothers, an importer and specialty food purveyor in Sacramento. The company was the first to import connoisseur-grade aceto balsamic tradizionale and remains the country's premier source for it.
 
As industry has cashed in on balsamico chic, the traditional artisanal elixir has been diluted to almost just another vinegar.
 
Italian immigrants may well have produced balsamic vinegar in New World attics, but Bertolli is the first known vinegar aficionado to create a consortium to support his efforts in this country. A group of 22 families invests the hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours it takes, over a decade, to produce a few liters of the syrupy vinegar, which they will share.
 
Bertolli's first vintage should be ready for his friends, partners and his restaurant, Oliveto in Oakland, in about two years. A chef and cookbook author, he is also part-parent, part-scientist, part-high priest to his battery of 122 barrels.
 
He is a determined champion of an ancient, time-gobbling tradition. Still, his efforts measure less than a drop of dew in today's multimillion-gallon tide of balsamic vinegar.
 
The cheapest mass-produced versions can cost as little as $1.99 but are typically concoctions of ordinary vinegar and caramel, aged as little as a day. The moderate to expensive kinds are one-sixth traditional, aged aceto balsamico, five-sixths ordinary wine vinegar.
 
The gold standard -- balsamico drawn from barrels that were first used as early as 1650 -- can fetch upward of $500 for a 3.4-ounce bottle. Vintages from barrels two or three centuries younger cost about $75 to $250 for 3.4 ounces.
 
The production of industrial balsamic vinegar in Italy dwarfs that of traditionally crafted and aged aceto, by 1.7 million liters to 1,760 liters.
 
Among the parade of commercial balsamic vinegars there are still some extraordinary -- and pricey -- imports.
 
Nevertheless, laying down $50 doesn't guarantee a fabulous aceto balsamico. As with other foods that have moved from expensive luxury to affordable near-necessity in the American kitchen, taste is the only sure arbiter.
 
Any bottle of the most authentic version, called aceto balsamic tradizionale, will be corked and sealed with wax or a lead capsule and bear a ribbon or a stamp of the producer's insignia. Italian law regulates the phrase "aceto balsamico tradizionale," and any Italian product with that name will state the point of origin, either Reggio Emilia or Modena. But it will not show an age on the label.
 
Not all artfully sealed, beribboned bottles contain true aceto balsamico tradizionale. The laws limiting the use of buzz words like "balsamico" or phrases like "balsamic vinegar of Modena" or "di Modena" are loose. They can signify a minimally aged blend, or unpalatable boiled caramel and vinegar.
 
In 1993, the Italian government banned the use of the term "balsamico," as well as reference to Modena or Reggio Emilia on any bottle but "tradizionale," pure balsamico, aged at least 12 years. The law, however, governed only Italian production.
 
In the United States, any vinegar can be called balsamic. The term has lost meaning, as the vinegar has lost character. And labels are often misleading. A giant "6" or "21" on the label means nothing about the age of what is inside the bottle, Corti said. "It's illegal to put the age of the vinegar on the bottle," he continued, "but they can print a number on there, and the customers make the inference."
 
Besides, he added, the vinegar's age is less important than that of the wood it ages in, no balsamico that costs less than $50 a bottle has had enough aging and care.
 
"Even if you age water for 21 years, its going to cost you something," he said.
 
The vinegar process starts with the grape harvest in fall. In Italy, Trebbiano, a tart variety, is the grape of choice, though regulations allow the white occhio di gatta and Spergola, as well as the red Lambrusco and Berzemino grapes.
 
In California, Bertolli has found that French columbard, chenin blanc, merlot, syrah and zinfandel grapes have the acidity for a well-balanced balsamic vinegar.
 
The grapes are crushed gently to reduce the release of tannins in their skin and then simmered until about 25 percent of the liquid evaporates to make a sweet syrup, which is poured into 75-to-100-liter chestnut or mulberry barrels and left for a year.
 
Air space is left in the barrel for oxidization, and slowly, wine yeast feeds on the must's sugar and converts it to alcohol. At the same time, but much more slowly, acetic bacteria consume the alcohol and transform it into acetic acid. The sugar content is too high for the yeasts to consume, and what remains sweetens the vinegar.
 
The vinegar loses 10 percent to 25 percent of its volume every year. Chestnut, cherry, mulberry, ash, locust and even juniper barrels are used in the elaborate decanting to smaller barrels, each wood lending a different nuance to the vinegar.
 
After 12 years, the vinegar's flavor mellows. More aging lets it become thicker and more complex as the natural sweet and sour balance deepens. The amber color darkens more than fine old fortified wine.
 
Some fanatics in Modena boast centuries-old aceto, whose mother, or matrix, can be traced back to the rule of the Estes in the 1500s. The best aceto balsamico varies vintage to vintage, bottle to hand-blown Venetian bottle.
 
Then as now, the very best is never sold. It is a family jewel and a process that binds generations with the land from which it sprang. The progress of a family's vinegar bears witness to the family's own evolution.
 
Who could assign a market value to the priceless?
 
"An Italian family that maintains an acetaia" -- or vinegar room -- "puts up a barrel when a child is born and serves it on its 21st birthday," Bertolli said.
 
"No one can make money by making real aceto balsamico," he added. He and his friends, he said, make the traditional vinegar to "create community."
 
"It's a way of slowing down and paying attention, a way of preserving tradition, a way of telling time."  

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company