In my local supermarket last week I found a snip. “30 years old balsamic,” the shelf tag said, under a nice little bottle; just €12.99 for 100ml, the standard size for a real “balsamico” bottle, and rather elegant.
I bought one a week ago for myself and two more today, as presents for my sisters in England.
They look lovely; understated Italian design, a good price for presents. My sisters might think it is real balsamic, that I've splashed out on them. Ha. It's not real balsamic, it's condimento; it says so on the bottle. The supermarket has just called it balsamic. It's an easy mistake to make. But from the viscosity, the treacly-ness, I believe it might be quite old. It's treacly, like real 30-year-old balsamic.
Anyway, it's nice. Mine is a quarter gone already and I'd buy more but real balsamic it ain't. Not at that price: impossibili. Change your shelf tag, supermarket, or I'll write to The Irish Times.
Like all condimenti this is meant to add flavour, fast. On cheese, vegetables, on steak, savoury things; not fruit, that needs real balsamic.
So, a condiment, in a bottle pretty enough to live on the table by the salt and pepper, to be used liberally.
It pours nicely; a firm shake, and it comes out just right for drizzling over Parma ham. Perfectimenti.
I had some on my lunch after the Friday market: a perfect day, end of season, locals out, the market at its best, a foodie heaven; I bought knobbly tomatoes, some smoked mozzarella and a sourdough loaf. With gravlax from Lidl; good.
Perhaps not many people are really into balsamic, but I am; a chap with a laptop in the kitchen and an inquiring sort of mind.
I like research; Wikipedia for the basics, then Google onwards. There are blogs full of foodies discussing fine balsamic, and I do buy it, when flush, which hasn’t been often lately.
From a supplier in Italy you can find it for €60 per 100ml, aged 12 years; that’s €600 a litre. Older balsamic costs more; from €1,000 a litre upwards. A standard supermarket bottle of just-about-drinkable red wine is say €7.50, that’s €10 per litre.
So with good balsamic costing a grand, per litre, at least, you can see why retailers order it in tiny bottles.
But enough of facts. Balsamic is art. Like perfume, balsamic costs effort and lots of time. A product of patience and artful barrel-making, like cognac. Stored quietly in a rack of up to 11 diminishing casks of different aromatic woods; the vinegar is slowly siphoned into the next smaller cask and so on down 30 long years, till it will barely pour. Nectar.
Best dripped carefully onto well-aged Parmesan, or onto wild strawberries, to be popped one by one into the mouth of your inamorato . . . Sorry, sorry, I went all gooey just for a moment there; those Italians, eh?
Real balsamic has, by European law, to say tradizionale on the label. Without that word, it's not real.
It must also state its age, clearly, in English; aged 12 years (the minimum), aged 20 years and so on. It is a protected speciality, like Feta cheese, Champagne or Irish whiskey. Like any decent whiskey, it must state its age, and you believe the label, because you’re civilised and you’ve got to believe something must be honest or you’d go round the twist.
Good balsamic will say: “Tradizionale Balsamico di Modena, aged 20 years,” and cost about €100 per 100ml.
I once bought 50ml of 30-year-old balsamic from my local deli in Devon, before I moved to Ireland.
I kept the little bottle in my car, just to sprinkle a few precious drops on haddock and chips or a decent pasty. It lasted years. I still have the bottle, now sadly empty.
Every supermarket has “balsamic”; all of them are vague about what they sell as balsamic. Even this pretty bottle in front of me does not state clearly, in plain English, that it is really, really 30 years old. It just hints at it.
It says “30-year anniversary”, which is a convenient sort of phrase if you ask me. I smell a clever food chemist and a slick marketing firm. They are exploiting a gap in public understanding.
That said, it's nice, their condimento; I think I'll have some now, on poached eggs, for breakfast.
