What is balsamic vinegar and what are the differences?

Italians refer to real balsamic vinegar as tradizionale in contrast to industriale or artigianale which you will find on supermarket shelves. Don't be fooled by stuff on the supermarket shelves….it's probably not the real thing. Real balsamic is never ever cheap. It is always expensive. Why?

Real balsamic vinegar is not a wine vinegar at all. It comes from grape must (juice). Briefly, here's the process: Farmers grow the grapes (like Trebbiano and Lambrusco, to name a few), leaving them on the vine until the last possible moment to ensure great sweetness; then they press them and cook them down to a thick syrup; then the whole concoction is aged for more than 12 years in real wooden barrels made of oak, cherry, juniper and the like. The fermentation and aging is done, unlike with wine, open to the air to achieve even more concentration of flavors, and combined with the blending of older and younger vinegars in the process results in a perfectly balanced marriage of mellow, fruity-sweet vinegar and deep woodsy and spicy notes from the barrels.

So we're talking a pretty sizable process and years of no return on investment for the artisan balsamic maker. Makes sense that a 250 ml bottle of the real stuff could cost upwards of $100 or more. Very expensive, to be sure, but also amazing.

So that's real balsamic—but what's a balsamic condiment? Condiments are close cousins but not quite the real thing. Through the careful process of fermentation, blending and aging (though usually less than 12 years), they can achieve a rich sweet flavor that comes very close to the real thing. Villa Mandori comes to mind.

The cheapo stuff that you might find on a supermarket shelf, while perfectly fine for cooking or everyday salads is made only partly from grape must and unaged wine vinegar. And the brown color is usually from caramel not from the natural aging process in wooden barrels. The whole thing is aged about as long as it takes to get a boat from Italy to the U.S. You can really taste the difference.

--Patrick