ITALY - Modena's Black Gold

I started today just wandering around the city centre in Modena, enjoying the early summer sun. This though was just a precurser to a really enjoyable day.

Palazzo Comunale - City Hall

Modena Cathedral

I was collected by minibus with some other people at midday and taken to a Balsamic Vinegar Acetaia around 20 minutes outside the city. Traditionally the vinegar was made in peoples homes so we arrived at a lovely villa in the countryside where a glass of Lambrusco wine was waiting for us. A guide then explained the process for making traditional Balsamic vinegar.

Locally grown grapes are picked and crushed and the juice then "cooked". Unlike mass produced Balsamic the grape juice is the only ingredient. What makes it so special is the aging process - mass produced vinegar is aged for around 3 years maximum but the traditional variety comes in two forms - "Aged" which is greater than 12 years old and "Extra Old" which is greater than 25 years old. Although the acidity stays the same, the sugar content increases with age, so the "Extra Old" vinegar is not sour to taste.

The ageing takes place in attics rather than cellars and this is why it originally was in peoples houses. The ageing is done by blending from barrel to barrel in the same way that's done with sherry. You start with 10 barrels of increasing size with Barrel 1 being small and barrel 10 being large. The 10 barrels are all filled with Year 1's grape juice.

The barrels are not sealed, they are left open to the air and changes in temperature with just a cloth over the hole in the barrel to stop the flies getting in. This also meant that when we went into the attic there was a lovely heady aroma.

At the end of Year 1, some of the liquid will have evaporated so Barrel 1 is topped up from Barrel 2, Barrel 2 from Barrel 3 etc with Barrel 10 being topped up with fresh juice from the following years harvest. So each year you have new juice coming into the system via Barrel 10 but that in Barrel 1 is becoming older and older.

After 12 or 25 years the vinegar has to pass an independant quality control and then up to one and a half litres from each of the small barrels can be bottled and sold, and the process continues.

There will always be some of the original batch in the barrels in ever decreasing amounts. So the line in the picture above started in 1954 and although they are bottling some of the vinegar each year there will still be some originating from 1954 in the barrel. The oldest line they had was from 1888.

We were then given a buffet lunch and encouraged to have the "Extra Old" with more subtle flavours and "Aged" with the stronger flavours. We were even encouraged to put some on our dessert.

The "Extra Old" was amazing, thick and sticky, not really tasting like vinegar at all - but before you rush out and buy some I should warn you that direct from the Acetaia it was €65 for 100ml - retail it would be even more expensive!!