THE SECRET WORLD OF THE BALSAMIC VINEGAR ELITE
Not until my second year living in Modena was I able to crack into the secret world of the vinegar elite and get a bottle for myself. I stumbled into this illustrious society when I made a grave error. I told Franco, the owner of the pet store in Vicolo Forni, about our Sunday drive up into the hills above Bologna with a couple of American friends. Once the words left my mouth, I wished I could have reached out and stuffed them back under my tongue. I blabbed to Franco how well we ate at a little trattoria, enjoying the delicious crescentini, a sort of flat bread, which we were told came from around Bologna. Franco was shocked and perhaps even a little offended. Fortunately he doesn’t have a problem finding the right words, or as his wife says, “He likes to communicate.”
Franco gently corrects me that crescentini, also known as tigelle, originate from the hills of Modena, not Bologna. Then he breaks into a smile. “The Bolognesi were lucky to have the good people from Modena next to them to teach them how to cook properly. If it weren’t for us, they’d still be wearing animal skins and beating on drums.”
And so my lesson in Modenese cuisine begins. Franco gestures to the huge covered market at the end of the alley and explains, “For example, it’s difficult to find true vinegar inside there; it’s only an industrialized imitation. If you come to my house this Sunday, I’ll show you how the real balsamico is made in my acetaio,” which he defines as a room with vinegar barrels.
I have already visited an industrial vinegar maker in Modena the year before, so I’m familiar with Modenese pride in their food. The man who led me around the little factory with industrial stainless-steel casks let me taste their very good approximation of the tradizionale balsamic. The company put dozens of different labels on the bottles of this vinegar to send all over the world. The guide then turned red with anger and told me, “Have you heard? Neapolitans are trying to steal our recipe! They’re making cheap stuff with labels saying, ‘Balsamic Vinegar from Modena, made in Napoli’!” He regained his composure about the vinegar fraud and assured me, “Anyway, it’s impossible to make true balsamic vinegar anywhere but Modena.” When I asked why, he replied, “Oh it’s the air, the grapes, the humidity, everything.”
In spite of his claim of authenticity for the industrial vinegar, this man showed me his own private, family acetaio with twenty barrels. I wiped away the cobwebs over the door, and he wiped a grubby window with his sleeve to let in a ray of light. “This is my mother!” he exclaimed with love as he pointed to a little cask in the corner. The “mother barrel” was full of the thick syrupy vinegar he claimed was more than a hundred years old. “I would never sell my mother. If the house catches on fire, it’s the first thing we carry outside!”
This protectionist attitude toward the real tradizionale vinegar makes it almost impossible for a Modenese to part with it. In old times, balsamico was given as a priceless dowry and still today is usually exchanged as a gift since all the time and effort to produce the vinegar makes it far too expensive to buy.
An exchange student from the United States staying in Spilamberto, just outside of Modena and the real home of balsamic vinegar, was clandestinely offered vinegar by a high school classmate. Boys wanted to meet this beautiful young American girl but didn’t know what to say to her. Finally one approached her, whispering romantically in her ear, “I can get you some real balsamic vinegar if you want.” The American student couldn’t have cared less about some dark, stinky vinegar; she was far more interested in meeting cute boys and having fun.
I have to find out how they make this precious elixir, so I jump at the chance to visit Franco’s homemade vinegar setup. Franco and his wife, Giordana, pick Katy and me up early Sunday morning to take us for a breakfast of cappuccini and heart-stopping deep-fried dough called gnocco fritto. We then risk the dense fog of the Padana plains, driving dangerously fast to reach their house in the country and taste this Modenese elixir. Franco’s nephew meets us at the door of the house, and Franco brings us some special coppa salami to taste. Franco’s nephew doesn’t want any. “Uncle, you know that I don’t eat meat.”
“What?” Franco shakes his head in mock dismay, “I don’t understand why my own flesh and blood insists on being a vegetarian. We have the best pork in the world here, and all he wants to eat is salad!” Franco’s nephew tells us, “If I don’t eat a bowl of tortellini every year at Christmastime, I’ll be written out of the inheritance!”
After the pork products, we venture up to the little attic of Franco’s farmhouse to see a series of musty wooden barrels — each one smaller than the next—filling the room. The windows are wide open, and Franco explains, “Vinegar is alive and must be properly aged. Besides, I love it when the whole house has this fantastic odor of vinegar. It permeates everything!” he says, delighted. I’m sure we’ll never be able to wash the acidic, molasses smell out of our clothes.
Franco describes the process to us, “Every November, Giordana and I boil a big batch of white Trebbiano wine to produce the fermented juice, or must. We add a little to the biggest barrel since almost a quarter of the liquid evaporates every year.” Franco lifts a stone on top of this huge barrel, which seals a hole in the wooden slate. Nearly half of the rock is eaten away by the acid of the wine inside. I wonder what the vinegar must do to your stomach, but Franco assures me, “You need the acid, otherwise the vinegar would become a syrup.”
Each barrel is made from a different type of wood — from juniper to chestnut — to give unique flavor to the black liquid. Once a year, the vinegar is decanted from the second smallest barrel into the mother barrel, from the third smallest into the second, and so on. Every year, an expert from the balsamic vinegar consortium, like a wine sommelier, tours the various acetaia (vinegar makers) to make sure the process is going as planned. “It’s a very tense time,” Franco tells me. “If you don’t follow the process, your vinegar will be ruined. Ruined! Then you have to throw away all your bad vinegar, which was begun more than a hundred years ago. This is a disaster for the family.” Franco drops his head sadly in sympathy for those who have lost all of their priceless liquid.
“After all this work, we produce only two liters a year, which we extract in January,” Giordana cuts in when she sees Franco bow his head.
Franco recovers his gregarious manner and continues, “Now you can understand why no one wants to sell the real vinegar since we barely have enough for ourselves. For us Modenesi, we care a lot about preserving this tradition of balsamico, and I hope in the future someone will keep looking after my barrels to produce the real vinegar from Modena.” I don’t dare tell Franco that I heard a company in California is now trying to produce authentic balsamic vinegar also.
After the tour, Franco bestows upon us a tiny bottle of his dark brew. I carefully wrap paper around the four-ounce bottle of precious liquid to avoid any disastrous cracks or unnecessary shaking. Once we’re back in the car, however, Franco guns the engine and swerves violently around the turns and joggles the vinegar, which nearly pops the puny cork.
We make it home safely, and the vinegar has survived. We can’t resist the almost creamy sweet flavor of the vinegar, so we pour it on everything — from splinters of Parmigiano - Reggiano cheese to meats and even on desserts like fresh strawberries and gelato. The balsamic tang of the vinegar is addicting. As with any bad habit, the absence of the desired object leaves us wanting more.
Our neighbor upstairs, the little old lady with the two fat dogs, hears that we visited Franco’s acetaio. “Now, you must try some balsamico from my barrels,” she says and hands us a bigger bottle. Over the next week, we flatter both her and Franco (separately) that their vinegar is indeed the tastiest. “Just wait until next year’s batch,” Franco tells us.
By Eric Dregni in "Never Trust a Thin Cook and Other Lessons from Italy’s Culinary Capital", University of Minnesota Press, USA, 2009, excerpts pp. 124-128. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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