Barrel of 16 Year Aged Balsamic Vinegar

Great tasting vinegar takes lots of care and time to create. Large industrial vinegar producers shorten the process of vinegar making from months and years to days and hours by adding chemicals like sulfuric acid, nitric acid and muriatic acid. Use those vinegars to spiffy up your pennies.

Traditionally made vinegars have none of that nonsense. They take a long time to mature and can’t compete on price with industrial models. The right vinegar can accentuate and transform cuisine. Here’s a primer:

Wine Vinegar

You can’t create great vinegars from mediocre ingredients, and you can’t make wine vinegar without first making wine. Barrels are partially—but never fully—filled with wine, allowing air and bacteria to interact with the liquid. The bacteria converts the alcohol into water and acetic acid (vinegar) and the vinegar maker takes over from there, blending and aging the vinegar till the maker is happy with the flavor.
Flavors: bright, tangy, crisp
Best uses: vinaigrettes, marinades, deglaze pans, soups, sautes, pickling

Rice Wine Vinegar

Like wine vinegar production, except made from sake. Sake is made from fermented rice. The quality of the sake is related to how much the rice is “polished”—meaning the fats and proteins in the outer layers of the rice are removed. Most vinegar companies buy pre-made sake and convert it. The best make their own sake in order to make their own vinegar.
Flavors: mild, fruity, complex
Best uses: vinaigrettes, marinades, sushi, delicate foods

Malt Vinegar

Like wine vinegar production, only with beer. Grain—in this case barley—is germinated in water, then dried in a roaster after it begins to sprout. The process converts the starch in the barley into sugar, which changes into alcohol when fermented the first time, and then into vinegar after it ferments again. The longer it ages, the smoother it gets.
Flavors: nutty, a little earthy, slightly sweet
Best uses: pickling, sprinkling as a condiment, marinades

Fruit Vinegar

Covering ripe fruit with water and letting it ferment creates fruit vinegar in a matter of weeks. One kind of bacteria converts the sugars into alcohol, then a different bacteria converts the alcohol into vinegar. Months or years of aging then round out the flavors. Quicker, more industrial production methods involve steeping fruit in white vinegar and “infusing” the fruit’s flavors into the vinegar. Infused, industrial fruit vinegars are sharp, borderline harsh, with only a whisper of the fruit flavor they claim.
Flavors: soft, sweet, fruity
Best uses: vinaigrettes, marinades, deglaze pans, mixers & mocktails

Balsamic Vinegar

Traditionally, grape must—AKA grape juice before it’s wine—is cooked down to half its original volume then stored in large wooden casks with “mother” vinegar to kickstart fermentation. After a year or so the young vinegar is blended into smaller barrels that hold older balsamic where it ages for years before bottling. Today, though, most balsamic is made of mostly wine vinegar with a small percentage of grape must, and aged for only months. The modern, industrial ver-
sion is sweet but lacks the nuance and balance of a traditional aged balsamic.
Flavors: rich, sweet, flavors of dark fruits like raisins or plums
Best uses: vinaigrettes, marinades, finishing grilled meats, strawberries, ice cream

Sherry Vinegar

From southern Spain, the juice of Palomino grapes is converted first into wine, then fortified with grape brandy to make sherry. Sherry vinegar is then made with the solera method: similar to making balsamic, the sherry is placed in oak barrels with “mother” vinegar, then aged and blended in barrels for years before bottling.
Flavors: sweet, crisp, light
Best uses: vinaigrettes, sprinkled on seafood or roast vegetables, fruit salad

Imagine you’re making a broth from scratch. When you start, it’s thinner and lighter in flavor. As it simmers, the liquid gets progressively thicker and the flavors get more and more intense. The same thing happens as balsamics age, only it takes years instead of hours.

In general, a younger balsamic will have a consistency similar to wine and a bright, acidic flavor. As balsamics age for years at ambient temperatures in wooden barrels, each summer’s heat evaporates a bit of the liquid, giving the vinegar a thicker, more syrupy consistency and a sweeter, more complex flavor.

One age isn’t “better” than another – instead, different ages of balsamics are ideal for different uses in the kitchen:

1. To shake into a cocktail: choose a bright, acidic balsamic, like the 6 year
2. To whisk into a vinaigrette: pick a younger, brighter balsamic, like the 8 year
3. To marinate meat: try a balsamic with full-flavor but still some acidity, like the 10 year
4. To finish a soup or braised dish: use a well-balanced balsamic, like the 10 year
5. To drizzle over strawberries, Parmigiano Reggiano or even gelato: go for an older, sweeter balsamic, like the 16 year
6. To reduce to a syrup: start with an older, thicker balsamic like the 30 year—it’s already so condensed and sweet from aging that there’s no reducing necessary

The balsamic we get from La Vecchia Dispensa is made by the Pelloni and Tintori families. When I visited, Simone Tintori showed me around the acetaia—the space where the balsamic is made. His family has perhaps a dozen sets of balsamic barrels. A set is called a batteria and typically includes five barrels. As Simone explained it to me, each batteria is made by the grandfather when a new daughter is born into the family. The balsamic made in the barrels will become a part of her dowry, but they’ll remain with the family’s collection even after she is married. The dozen batterie in the Tintori family’s collection represent a dozen daughters over the last few generations.

Each batteria bears the name of the daughter who owns them. I saw Antonietta, Guendolina, Roberta. Many of the barrels are decades old. As we walked through the acetaia, Simone points out batterie belonging to his sister, his aunts, his grandmother. On the walls above the barrels were old black and white family photos. “The acetaia is our family pantheon,” Simone poetically explained.

The same barrels made for Simone’s grandmother when she was a toddler are still in use today.

In fact, they’re probably at their best now, having decades of use. When you put vinegar in a wooden barrel, the barrel doesn’t just flavor the vinegar. The vinegar also flavors the barrel. It’s an ongoing virtuous cycle, a vinegar-flavored barrel gives a different, more complex flavor to the vinegar than the brand new barrel did. A well-made barrel can be used for as long as a century before it falls apart.

It’s the barrels that give the balsamic most of its flavor.

To make traditional balsamic, you start with just one ingredient: grape must, the unattractively named fresh-pressed juice of grapes, skins, seeds, and stems. The grape must is cooked and reduced, then it goes straight into barrels. To start the aging process, it’s mixed with a little of last year’s balsamic, called the “mother,” which kicks off the transformation from must to vinegar. As it ages the balsamic will spend time in at least four different barrels or as many as a dozen. The barrels in a batteria are typically made from a variety of different woods including oak, acacia, cherry, juniper, and mulberry. By the time the balsamic is ready to sell, it will have spent time in each barrel in the batteria. Each type of wood contributes a different flavor. Older barrels add complexity and balance.

These days, most of the balsamic on the market doesn’t come from family pantheons.

About fifty years ago, balsamic makers starting producing a variation on their ancient, traditional product. If you see any balsamic for less than $100 a bottle, you can bet it’s this new version of the vinegar, which I’ll call “regular balsamic.”

Regular balsamic isn’t always just made of grape must. It can have up to 80% wine vinegar which is cheaper than grape must but often has a harsher flavor. But perhaps the biggest difference is that unlike the traditional balsamics which age for at least a dozen years before they’re allowed to be sold, regular balsamic can be sold after just two months. That’s what happens with the thin, sweet, bland vinegar you find in most grocery stores today.

When choosing a balsamic, it’s always good to taste—if you can. When that’s not an option, check the ingredient list. If wine vinegar is listed first the flavor will be weak, and you’re likely to see caramel coloring added as well—too much wine vinegar dilutes the balsamic from the dark liquid we expect and caramel coloring is added to hide that. At Vecchia Dispensa, they use 70% grape must as the base of their balsamics and they never add any caramel coloring. Vecchia Dispensa ages in good wooden barrels for years, and you can taste the complexity and balance they give.

In Italy they used to put the age of the balsamic on the label (and that’s still how we do it at Zingerman’s), but the Italians recently switched over and started listing the density instead. If you find the density listed on the label, as the density gets higher the balsamic will be thicker and sweeter. Our six-year balsamic has a density of 1.18 and a bright, acidic flavor while our thirty-year balsamic has a density of 1.35 and a deeper, more raisiny flavor and a consistency closer to molasses.