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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
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