Balsamic Vinegar
Recommended
- Bertoli Balsamic Vinegar of Modena
- Monari Federzoni Balsamic Vinegar of Modena ($3.39/16.9 oz)
- Ortalli Balsamic Vinegar of Modena ($4.69/16.9 oz)
Rec w/Reservations
- Lucini Gran Riserva Balsamico ($14.00/8.5 oz)
- Colavita
- Rienzi
- Progresso
- Alessi
- Modenaceti
Not Recommended
- Star Balsamic
- Cento
- Pompeian
Few foods demonstrate such a wide range in price-you can spend $2 or $200 for one bottle—or quality. Our tasters decode the mysteries of balsamico.
Tasting Balsamic Vinegars
Traditional aged balsamic vinegar, produced in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, can cost $200 per bottle, making
even fine French perfume look like a bargain. You can also walk into any supermarket in America and fork over $2 or
$3 for a big bottle of balsamic vinegar. What are you really buying in each case? And should you buy either product?
To find out, I purchased 13 balsamic vinegars ranging in price from $60 per ounce to just 18 cents per ounce. Before
going into the tasting room, I wanted to figure out why the same product can cost so much and so little. A crash
course in recent history helped.
Thirty years ago, almost no one in America had ever heard of (never mind tasted) balsamic vinegar. It was an
obscure product made in northern Italy and so highly valued that many families passed along barrels of aged vinegar
as part of a wedding dowry. Fast-forward a generation, and balsamic is now the best-selling vinegar in America,
accounting for 45 percent of all supermarket vinegar sales. Intoxicated by its big, sweet, caramel flavor, Americans
mix it in salad dressing; drizzle it on meat, fish, and vegetables; and add it to sauces, soups, and desserts. Of
course, none of this popularity would have been possible if balsamic vinegar had remained a $100-an-ounce
extravagance.
A Tale of Two Vinegars
It turns out there are two kinds of balsamic vinegar, and they're made by entirely different processes. The traditional
technique takes a minimum of 12 years; the modern industrial method as little as a few hours. The centuries-old
traditional way begins with late-harvest grapes (usually white Trebbiano) grown in Emilia-Romagna. The sweet, raisiny
juice, skin, and seeds, called grape must, is boiled in open vats until reduced to about half its original volume. This
concentrated must is added to the largest of a battery of wooden barrels, which are kept in uninsulated attics in this
region where the summers are hot and the winters frosty. The battery comprises barrels of different woods-including
oak, cherry, juniper, and mulberry-and sizes. The barrels aren't sealed; they have cloth-covered openings on top to
allow evaporation. Each year, before the vinegar maker adds the new must to the largest barrel, he transfers some
of its ever-more concentrated contents to the next largest, and so on down the line, before finally removing a liter or
two of the oldest vinegar from the smallest barrel. This is traditional balsamic vinegar.
What's more, all this can only happen in two provinces of Emilia-Romagna: Modena and Reggio Emilia, an area
designated as a government-protected denomination of origin, or DOP. Each province has its own consortium of
experts who approve the balsamic before sealing it in its official 3-ounce bottle (an inverted tulip shape for Reggio
Emilia; a ball with a neck for Modena). If you want a guarantee that you're getting true balsamic vinegar, look for the
word tradizionale and these distinctive bottles-and be prepared to pay dearly.
All those rules are thrown out the window when it comes to commercial balsamic vinegar. With no law defining
balsamic vinegar in the United States, manufacturers supply the huge demand any way they can, coloring and
sweetening wine vinegar and calling it “balsamic vinegar of Modena.” It may not be the real thing, but could I find
one worth using until I hit the lottery?
I began by choosing 10 top-selling, nationally available supermarket balsamic vinegars. All were made in Italy, and
their prices ranged from $2.39 to $14 a bottle. I tasted them plain, reduced to a glaze for roasted asparagus, and
whipped into a vinaigrette. I also tasted a traditional balsamic vinegar for comparison (see In Search of the Ultimate Drizzling Vinegar).
Now here's the bad news: Tasted straight from the bottle, there was no contest between supermarket and traditional
balsamics. Even the best of the commercial bunch-while similarly sweet, brown, and viscous–couldn't compete with
the complex, rich flavor of true balsamic vinegar. With notes of honey, fig, raisin, caramel, and wood; a smooth,
lingering taste; and an aroma like fine port, traditional balsamic is good enough to sip like liqueur.
But the news is not all bad. You don't need to take out a loan to keep balsamic vinegar in your pantry. The test
kitchen made vinaigrette with both a 25-year-old traditional balsamic from Reggio Emilia and the top supermarket
brand from our taste tests–and frankly, in dressing, the traditional stuff did not justify its price tag. In a pan sauce,
most of that fine aroma and depth of flavor was cooked away. The lesson was clear: Don't waste your money on
pricey traditional balsamic vinegar if you're going to toss it on salad or cook with it. The good stuff works best
uncooked, as a drizzle to finish a dish. In vinaigrette or cooked sauce, the sharpness of a supermarket balsamic
adds a pleasingly bright contrast to the vinegar's natural sweetness.
The Best Supermarket Option
Among the 10 supermarket vinegars we tasted, some were quite good, others quite awful. Why? An independent lab
test supplied part of the answer. Our top choice contained the most sugar; vinegars with the lowest sugar content
occupied four of the bottom five spots on the list. This makes sense–the sweeter supermarket vinegars tasted more
like the traditional balsamic. It turns out that our tasters also wanted their supermarket balsamic vinegar to be
viscous, like traditional balsamics. Lab tests confirmed that higher viscosity tracked with higher rankings.
But sweetness and thickness alone were not enough to guarantee a spot high on our list. The second-sweetest
vinegar was also the second most viscous, and it broke the pattern by appearing near the bottom. We were puzzled,
until we tested pH levels. This vinegar was the least acidic one tested, and tasters thought it was excessively sweet.
So a good supermarket balsamic vinegar must be sweet and thick (like the real deal), but it should also offer a little
jolt of acidity.
In the end, we found one supermarket vinegar–Lucini Gran Riserva–that appealed across the board, working well
both plain and in the dishes we prepared. The manufacturer told us they use must that is aged in the artisanal way
for 10 years, mixed with the company's own wine vinegar. It may have come across as “honey-sweet,” but this
vinegar offered “a nice compromise between sweet and tangy,” with a “nuanced flavor” that came closest to
traditional balsamic. I'll admit that it's no 25-year-old consortium-approved marvel. (That bottle is making its way home
with me.) But Lucini Gran Riserva also didn't cost $60 per ounce. In fact, at about $2 per ounce, I'll use this
supermarket vinegar at home–when my boss isn't paying the bill.
When it comes to drizzling vinegar over berries or a piece of grilled fish, do you have to shell out hundreds of dollars for a traditional vinegar aged for at least 12 years? To find out, we conducted another tasting that included a traditional balsamic approved and bottled by the Reggio Emilia vinegar consortium; Lucini Gran Riserva (winner of
our supermarket tasting); and two high-priced commercial balsamics-the kind sold in gourmet stores.
The not-so-surprising news? The 25-year-old Cavalli Gold Seal Extra Vecchio Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Reggio Emilia, at $180 for 3 ounces, topped nearly everyone's list, with tasters waxing poetic about its “pomegranate,” “caramel,” “smoky” flavor that “coats the tongue” and tastes “amazing.” In such rich company, our supermarket winner couldn't compete. Lucini finished last.
But the big surprise was the strong performance of the high-priced commercial vinegars I purchased at gourmet stores. They were nearly as good as the 25-year-old vinegar and cost just $3 to $4 per ounce. Tasters praised the Oliviers & Co. Premium Balsamic Vinegar of Modena ($27 for 8.5 ounces) as “fruity, raisiny, and complex,” with notes
of “wood, smoke, flowers,” and described the Rubio Aceto Balsamico di Modena ($35 for 8.5 ounces) as “floral” and “aromatic.” Made with aged grape must and, in the case of the Oliviers & Co., good wine vinegar, these gourmet commercial balsamics are reasonably priced options if you want to drizzle balsamic vinegar over food and don't want to pay a fortune.
