Aceto Balsamico

Aceto Balsamico Di Modena is a thing that we all know. For many centuries, no-one took much notice of it. It’s produced in a long and involved process taking many years, nay decades, in the lofts of various farmhouses in the region.

Then, one day, someone revolutionised the process, industrialised it, and copyrighted the name. This is what’s sold in shops around the world as balsamic vinegar, and it bears about as much resemblance to the real thing as Nescafé does to espresso.

We went to the Cavazzone farmhouse, which is owned by Umberto Sidoli, who also owns the Hotel Posta. The farmhouse was originally built for Baron Franchetti. After he died, it was bought first by the architect, then by the Sidoli family. Why was it sold? The baron’s children basically pissed away his fortune. Umberto’s great-grandfather bought it in 1919, and it has been in the family ever since.

 In their loft they produce the traditional balsamic vinegar. They can’t call it “of Modena” because that’s copyrighted, but theirs is the original and genuine product. Grape juice from four different varietals is boiled up, fermented, then barreled in a series of five different woods – oak, cherry, mulberry, juniper and chestnut – and left to mature for decades. It doesn’t matter what order you start with the barrels, but once you have, it’s fixed for that series of vinegar. The barrels are uncorked but covered with linen cloth, and evaporation happens over time. Once it’s ready, maybe five, 10, 20, or even 30 years later, you can take up to 1/3 of the liquid from the final barrel. You then top up from the next-most-recent barrel, which is topped up from the third, etc. etc. This means that the liquid sold is described as, for example, “at least 20 years old” rather than giving an exact year, as it is constantly being blended. The final product is a rich, thick, syrupy liquid, nothing like what you buy in a supermarket.

The ageing loft

After explaining all this, as well as the history of the house and his family, Umberto took us downstairs for a tasting of the differently-aged vinegars. As they get older, they get sweeter, more syrupy and complex in flavour. We tried one of them accompanying boiled eggs and parmesan cheese. This was followed by a pasta-making demonstration from our chef. He showed us how to make the pasta, then rolled out some he’d prepared earlier and showed us how to make tortellini, and similar filled pasta, as well as tagliatelle and other grades of ribbons.

This was all making us very hungry, and we sat down to a dinner in the restaurant – a typical Italian dinner. This time we had both tortellini and risotto with asparagus after the antipasti, and finished on roast pork with – you guessed it! – balsamic vinegar, and finally panna cotta with a balsamic glaze.

That concluded our education in balsamic. We reboarded our bus and went back to the hotel.