A vinegar that sells like wine

Yes, from vinegar to wine. And many of our manufacturers do try to make wine out of bignay, rice and even dragon fruit. But to call wine such, it usually is from grapes. And to call vinegar such, it can be any fermented product from fruit. Rather than call bignay a wine, why do we not take inspiration from the production of balsamic vinegar which now sells at a more premium price than table wine?

I had the chance to visit an acetacia, or a vinegar manufacturing place, in Modena, Italy. The small villa of 16 hectares was acquired by the Leonardi family in 1947 after the villa owners left the place after World War II. We were received by Davide Leonardi, whose passion is so evident in carrying on his father’s business of making balsamic vinegar. Yes, they need not do wine, but concentrated on vinegar making because the former owners had barrels more than 100 years old and it would have been a waste not to carry on the balsamic vinegar business. Why? Because a battery of barrels are needed to produce the famed thick syrupy balsamic vinegar. And the older the barrels are, the more precious the product becomes.

It takes 12 years for a barrel to produce 10 liters of the famed product, should you wish to start today. One such celebrity, Pierce Brosnan, started a barrel just this year and hopes to get his first batch of vinegars (10 liters) in 2029, having started in 2017. You can also buy your own “battery of casks” for just 4,000 euros a set and wait 12 years. Some families do it upon the birth of a child or upon teenage years so they can have their own balsamic vinegar 12 years after.

The explanation of the aging of the product is pretty simple. You need special wooden casks, similar to how you age wine, and these could be chestnut, oak or mulberry wood casks. But a “battery” consists of about five barrels, and the smallest is where the “aged produce” is gotten each year like a harvest. Each barrel could lose a liter of content over time due to fermentation and evaporation; a liter is added from the second barrel which may have lost double the amount, and gets filled with contents from the third barrel and so on.

Quite a good story, whether for marketing or for a real story of passion, dedication and love for a craft that has gone on for generations.

The youngest real balsamic from Modena to be called such is 12 years old. The others you see in the specialty stores here and abroad are just balsamic vinegar, not from Modena. They all believe that Modena has the micro climate for the production of these special vinegars that are good as topping also for ice cream and cheese. This is the  special expensive drop of gustatory pleasure, and you will understand better once you hear Davide’s story, as we did.

We have heard of our various vinegars like sinamak, sukang Iloco, pinakurat and sukang Paombong, have we not? To be as sustainable as Modena vinegar, however, the secret is not a secret. It takes the same formula as other Italian DOP products – DOP means Denominazione di Origine Protetta (literally Protected Designation of Origin) – which guarantees that the products are from the origin stated.

This is to also protect the consumer from buying fakes, as many unscrupulous traders have used the terms balsamico, prosciutto and parmigiano even if they are manufactured elsewhere.

The idea is to keep to traditional ways of processing these products, to be called DOP and to attach “Tradizionale” or traditional to the label, to guarantee the buyer that the manufacture did not deviate from traditional methods and can be rightfully called Traditional Balsamic Vinegar.

The secret is to have a consortium – a group of manufacturers who want to keep the standards and to protect each other from imitations, short cut experts and otherwise unscrupulous business people who wish to capitalize on their name or reputation without following the necessary ingredient: TIME. Each of the methods that make a DOP popular and sustainable is patience to wait for the right time, using the right process which has been tried and tested over generations.

Another Italian secret is the contentment with their size. Not everybody has to be big or have to scale up to be sustainable. Even small producers get the same premium price for their product, even if their operation is smaller than others. So, how does this contrarian thought become possible?

Everyone supports the traditional producers. Tour guides, local governments, local residents, local customers all help in preserving the tradition, the reputation and the very name which the products come by – balsamic vinegar from Modena, prosciutto from Parma, Parmiggiano Reggiano from Parma and Reggio Emilia areas.

This is a good model and inspiration for our local vinegar makers. We have the right ingredients for making rice vinegar, coconut vinegar and all kinds of fruits to make vinegars (dragon fruit, bignay, etc) but why do we insist on making wine out of them?

What we can use is a good vinegar industry and with government support like from the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Tourism, the Department of Agriculture and Department of Trade and Industry, we may just stumble on a sustainable vinegar industry which can be world-class and world-renowned in years to come.