balsamic

back at home now—the daily pasta, the gelato breaks, and wine are slowly digesting into my subconscious.  as my thoughts ground back into the reality of a grey, rainy, georgia with work to be done, i enoyed myself a couple days of those jet-lagged, couch-sitting, vacation blues to refocus my energy, and let my body catch up.  asleep at seven, asleep at eight—up at four, four thirty.   a year ago, when surfing the vacation blues in brooklyn, i would find myself depressed, agonizing every decision in a search for something better from my head.  in retrospect, these sessions of rejection from my brain re-entering my (at that time) daily life are some of the real memorable, watershed moments that led me to farming. nowadays, the vacation blues wear a much different hue.  inspired by italy, and terra madre, new reflections, questions, rejections—after sharing ideas and suggestions—whole new swirls of concepts, colors, and ideas are being brushed into little, oily circles on my brain palette. 

like many advocates of slow food, of local agriculture, of csa’s and of farm-to-city, farm-to-school programs, my beginnings of finding today can go back to the question:  where does my food come from?  or whatever variation that was bugging me at the time—well how does it get here?  what are they spraying on it, and what does that do to me?  how was this animal treated?  i didn’t want to blindly chew my way down the path of least resistance.  i didn’t even want a path.

the quest from and since this realization has been very gratifying.  each unveiling, each new discovery about what a certain thing was made of, or how that was produced, or this grew and processed—each little bit of knowledge felt like a small victory.  and now, after almost a year of working full time as a farmer, and a year of exposure to the stomachs and brains of two successful farm-to-table restaurants, i can feel the accumulation of all these small victories in a very satisfying way.  i’m closer to not only my immediate personal goals of education, and a happy, healthy lifestyle for me and her, but i’m also closer to realizing some longer term, big picture goals than i ever would have imagined possible just twelve months ago today. 

her and i, on our last days in italia, came in contact with an incredible balsamic vinegar producer just outside of the city of modena.  this topic deserves a brief education.

what if i told you that you’ve never had balsamic vinegar in your life.  that all the black sour-sweet vinegar you’ve doused over salads in your lifetime has actually been a cheap knockoff—a sugary, unrelated, chinatown-blanket-dvd-guy quality imitation.  it turns out i’d be right to say this a lot more than i’d be wrong.

real balsamic, known as aceto balsamico tradizionale di modena, is a completely different product.  as the name suggests, is a traditional method of vinegar production from one very small place in the world:  modena. 

twelve years—that’s the amount of time it takes to properly age and produce a bottle of balsamic vinegar.  made of only one hundred percent grape must—freshly pressed grapes—cooked over a low flame, in open air vats, for a very long time.  the thickened mixture fills open-topped oak barrels (three quarters to the top).  the remaining space is left for oxygen, allowing the vinegar to naturally ferment—reacting with both the wooden barrel as well as its environment.  busier in the hot summer, and slower in the cool winters, this is an alive product.   

there’s no business for such a labor and time intensive product like this, which explains why its origins were always familial and never commercial.  when a son was born the grapes would be crushed.  twenty five years later, for his wedding present, the vinegar would be ready.  a quarter century!  each family making it’s own recipes filled with unique quirks ranging from wood choice, to rotational systems, to the use of mineral rich river rocks. 

they also make a more everyday variety, by adding a couple ingredients and subtracting a few years.  a percentage of grape must—ranging from twenty percent to sixty percent—is mixed with wine vinegar to produce a quicker, and less time consuming product.  still though it is aged anywhere from two months to a decade to produce the desired flavor.  lack of color is made up for with the addition of caramel. 

flash forward until today, and you will agree we live in a much different world for balsamic vinegar.  balsamic has been a mainstay in my life— it came on everything!  on every table. on every salad.  infused into this, soaked into that.  balsamic chicken.  balsamic turkey london broil. an extra sweet and thick squiggle of balsamic painted on the rim of my fancy plate.  balsamic blew up, and with it went tradition.  producers from all countries—let alone from one specific area in one specific country—began making cheap imitation vinegars with no standards, and no quality.  sold worldwide with the label of balsamic despite its lack of resemblance to the true thing.  a balsamic disaster!

if you don’t recognize why this is such a tragedy, think harder.  this is an ancient food tradition, taught through experience and time and ritual.  there are few things that make us human beings, and this is undoubtedly one of them.  to strip that all away and mass produce a low budget sham of an imitation, is to strip it of all its humanity.  balsamic vinegar—it seemed so innocent—just sitting there in a lush pool at the bottom of my bowl. the real stuff?  it’s so precious you literally use it drop—by drop—by drop. 

thankfully, some relief has come after thirty years of modena balsamico producers fighting the trends.  a new court ruling in two thousand nine ensures consumers now have something to look for.  officially, across the world, only vinegar produced in the above described ways can be called balsamic.  this is huge.  needless to say, if you peruse your grocery store this afternoon you will most likely see offenders and non-compliers, but the rules exist.  you can also look for “de modena”, or one of the two seals this court ruling enforces: indicazione geografica protetta (igp or pgi, depending on the language), which covers the more every day varietal, as well as the protected denomination of origen, or pdo, which covers the traditionally aged product.  look for these labels and you know you have something authentic.  and without them?  well you’re on your own, because just like all other areas of food production few companies produce most of the product as cheaply and as in as large quantities as possible.  check the ingredient list.  all grape must = traditionally aged.  grape must before wine vinegar on the ingredient list is a higher quality product than if vinegar is listed before must.  but this is only at the top.  at the bottom of the quality pyramid look out for any sort of input from apple cider vinegar to high fructose corn syrup.    

consumer education from small scale producer—from an artisanal balsamic producer in modena, or a grassfed beef rancher in the usa—in a world of mass production is of paramount importance.  there is a reason why real food costs more, and it needs to be supported not only for our health, but in some cases, for our humanity.