Why is Real Balsamic Vinegar so expensive (& is it actually worth it?)

[Music] what if I told you you have probably never tasted real balsamic vinegar that is unless you remember spending over a hundred dollars or potentially up to a thousand dollars on a tiny 100 milliliter or about 3.5 ounce bottle and trust me you would remember first authentic balsamic has to be in just one of two bottle shapes either a teardrop shaped bottle from Modena Italy or an upside down tulip shaped bottle from Reggio Amelia now in the United States these typically have to be specially ordered online but I happen to find one in a grocery store where it was on the very top shelf behind lock and key and I had to be escorted straight to the cash register to pay right away so naturally I had to find out the answer to two questions one what makes real balsamic vinegar so expensive but more importantly is it actually worth it like is this 150 bottle that much better than a 20 bottle or what about that four dollar bottle that I used to buy in college now what seemed like simple questions when we started gathering information for this video a couple of months ago spiraled into almost an infinite number of rabbit holes where I quickly had two realizations first balsamic vinegar might be one of the most confusing ingredients to buy in a U.S grocery store but if chosen correctly balsamic vinegar can be used in not just boring old salad dressings but as a topping for grilled Meats it makes one of the best Italian hobies you can imagine and it can even amplify vanilla ice cream to something out of this world and this brings me to my second realization balsamic vinegar is one of the most versatile and underrated ingredients that I think every home cook should have in their pantry and actually know how to use and then a third realization hit me and that is this might be a little bit too much information for just one video so we turned it into a mini series in this mini-series we're gonna do a deep dive into the world of balsamic vinegar of which there are three Acts Act One how was traditional balsamic vinegar made and why is it so expensive act two what is the difference between real balsamic and the typical ones found at the grocery store and more generally how is balsamic used in cooking and act three might be my favorite where we answer can you actually taste a difference this is where I ran through a bunch of different taste test experiments from salads to steaks to ice cream and more these three acts will lead us to the final answer of two very important questions that you can Implement in your day-to-day life and that is what are the best ways to use balsamic vinegar at home and secondly what is the best type of balsamic to buy for the average home cook because let's be real no matter how good this traditional stuff may be at 150 per bottle a very small percentage of us are ever going to even try this let alone buy a full bottle so let's answer why is real balsamic vinegar so expensive and we begin act one in the birthplace of balsamic renowned for several of the most popular foods in the world Italy traditional balsamic is a type of vinegar that originates from Italy and is known for its complex sweet and tangy flavor in addition it has a luxurious viscous texture making it primarily useful as a garnish or topping compared to the thin watery stuff that most of us might be used to it is made from the must of grapes in either the Reggio Amelia or Modena regions of Italy now a very important item to note with this bottle is this the only ingredient used to make traditional balsamic vinegar is grape must authentic dop balsamic vinegar is made from 100 grape must there is absolutely no other ingredients added to this and this will be important to remember when we start looking at the other options you can find at the store in Act 2 and it begins to explain why this tiny 100 milliliter bottle is so expensive according to the balsamic traditional website in order to make authentic dop balsamic it goes through four basic steps first the grapes from the Modena or Reggio Amelia regions are harvested when ripe and then pressed down into the grape must which is the concentrate of the natural sweet juices skins seeds and stems of the grapes next the grape must is cooked over open air boilers which evaporates some of the water and concentrates the sugars of the grape juice once cooked and cooled the must then goes through fermentation and acidification and this is done by naturally selected yeast and ferments in the vinegar Cellar and if this sounds familiar to winemaking you're not wrong at a general level vinegar is made from a fermented alcohol that is allowed to oxygenate and over ferment which breaks down most of the alcohol into acetic acid and acetic acid is what gives vinegar its signature sour taste after fermentation and acidification the final step is maturation and aging and this is where the great must is patiently concentrated and as the website puts it this is the final step that leads to the inimitable organoleptic complexity of traditional balsamic vinegar of Modena or in layman's terms this is where the magic happens after going through the first three steps the grape must needs to be aged for a minimum of 12 years in a battery and a battery is a set of barrels with decrease in volumes often made with different types of wood and the vinegar is progressively concentrated and transferred to smaller barrels before finally being ready for production at least 12 years later and because of this process the balsamic vinegar gets infused with Aromas of aged wood that supposedly add a ton of complexity and I can safely say after cracking open my own 150 bottle and pouring myself some it kind of messed with my mind I never knew that balsamic could taste like this first time trying real balsamic vinegar see what it tastes like so interesting deeply complex sweet it's sour but almost like hints of like Maple in a way that is very very interesting now one more quick thing after the balsamic is removed from the final Barrel before it goes to be bottled it must pass an organoleptic test by a commission of expert tasters where it is evaluated based on a bunch of different metrics I'll link the sources if you want to read more as it's pretty rigorous but this includes items such as it must have a density higher than 1.24 it must have an acidity greater than 4.5 and then it's evaluated based on sight taste and smell if the balsamic does not pass it is returned to the barrel for another year but if it does finally pass it is then ready to be bottled and as you can guess this long process and the reduction in liquid is what makes traditional balsamic so expensive the average bottle that is imported from Italy is over one hundred dollars for 100 milliliters or about 3.5 ounces now if you want to get the authentic stuff as I teased earlier with the bottle shapes you better know what to look out for an authentic balsamic will only be packaged into bottle shapes and if it's not in one of these bottles it's not traditional balsamic the balsamic made with grapes from the Reggio Amelia region are going to be in an upside down tulip-shaped bottle and the balsamic from Modena Italy is in a 100 milliliter balsamic drop or teardrop shaped bottle which I thought was kind of odd but when I heard the story it makes a lot of sense due to the high price and coveted taste imitations were a big problem for recognizing authentic dop vinegar from Modena so in 1987 the Chamber of Commerce hired a young Automotive designer georgetto giaguaro to design their bottle shape as a way to guarantee authenticity and it's a similar story for the bottle used in Amelia romagna now additionally both of these will be sealed with a serial number and have the red dop stamp and the e-chap versions that can actually be aged longer than 12 years Amelia romagna has three classifications the bronze silver and gold while Modena has just two Vecchio for their 12-year aged and extra Vecchio for the 25 year age version now again in the U.S at least you'll probably have to special order these online as you'll likely never see them in your local grocery store unless it happens to be especially sore because mine was literally behind lock and key on the top shelf okay so now that we know why this little bottle is so expensive we need to switch gears and talk about how this stuff is typically used because it's much different from how I and probably you grew up using balsamic vinegar so to round out Act One let's answer this from a flavor perspective why does traditional balsamic vinegar taste so good and why is it so versatile like the fact that you could sit down with a salad steak and a bowl of ice cream and use this as a garnish for all three is kind of crazy to think about I gotta say this is probably the best steak dinner I've ever made Now spoiler alert from act three this is a specific thing for the traditional 100 grape must version it's not the case for some of the other balsamic options out there so let's break down the flavor equation oh that's not good the flavor equation is made up of six elements taste Aroma and texture these are items you've probably heard about but also things like site such as contrast physical reactions spicy food or The Human Experience for example what mood you are in can all influence how we perceive the flavor of food now we'll do a full video breaking down this equation at some point but for purposes of this video the differences between bottles of balsamic can primarily be explained through taste Aroma and texture as each of the six bottles we are evaluated in act two have a different flavor profile and for fans of Pokemon I like to think of each of these bottles kind of having their own pokedex entry with different flavor characteristics so just how Charmander Charmeleon and Charizard all evolve and have different characteristics it's kind of similar to how balsamic vinegar works so as you can guess the traditional balsamic is really the final evolution but we need to start here first to make our first flavor decks entry because this explains why it's so good and can be used as a framework to evaluate the other options in the next video and in short there are six Key properties that traditional balsamic has of the five taste balsamic is predominantly sour from that acetic acid but it's also a little sweet from the natural sugars in the concentrated grape juice and what's also pretty interesting is that traditional balsamic is slightly Umami in this study the Aged versions of balsamic were found to have small amounts of glutamic acid which is one of the responsible compounds for Umami taste receptors and from taste alone this is a very unique balance profile and shows why it works on both sweet foods like ice cream but also Savory Foods like steak now from a texture perspective traditional balsamic has a higher density or viscosity than water water swishes around as we all know but the traditional balsamic is much thicker so it lingers longer on our salad greens sandwiches and tongue and as we will see in act 3 the texture is an obvious differentiator between many of the bottles at the store and lastly we have the aroma or smells so if I close my nose and give this a taste I only get the sour sweet and kind of umami flavor but as soon as I open my nose I'm getting hit with all this complexity of amazing Aromas now there are probably hundreds of individual Aroma molecules but the two dominant composite smells I'm going to use for this case study are fruity from the grapes and then secondly are kind of the Aged wood notes and this specific version is kind of mapley and this results from the aging process these Woody Maple Aromas are what make traditional balsamic so interesting in terms of Flavor now I can use this information to create a spider graph flavor profile for our traditional balsamic that looks something like this now this is a subjected measurement of how I'm perceiving these different properties but this is a similar process to how coffee is analyzed by a panel of taste testers and this chart helps explain why traditional balsamic is kind of a chameleon acidic condiment that is primarily used as a garnish or toppings on foods that range from sweet to Savory and from the back of the 150 bottle box they mentioned that traditional balsamic is ideal for grilled and boiled vegetables fish and seafood foie gras cured meat pasta pizza risotto barbecue meat cheeses vanilla ice cream cheesecake strawberries or it can be consumed alone at the end of the meal for good digestion now what's most interesting about this list is what's missing if you look again grilled and boiled vegetables are on there but there's no mention of salad or salad dressing which in the United States is probably the number one thing that balsamic vinegar is most known for could this be a random Omission maybe but more likely I think Modena treats traditional 100 grape musk balsamic as a fundamentally different product that maybe shouldn't be wasted by mixing into a salad dressing like the cheap bottles that can be found at the store so after hearing about all of this while traditional balsamic is amazing there is a big old elephant in the room and that is the price this is way too expensive to be used for the everyday home cook and because of this Italy themselves and other countries produce different versions of balsamic vinegar at a wide array of prices and this is why I can't wait to dive into Acts 2 and 3 where we'll cover what exactly is different about all these bottles labeled balsamic vinegar at the grocery store for example the traditional stuff might be 100 great bust but after spending 30 minutes in the aisle I realized every bottle with balsamic labeled has some added ingredients also all five of these bottles have an igp stamp from Modena Italy but all of them cost different amounts have different names and Order of ingredients on one grape must is still listed first but on others it's not and because of this we'll see is one of the telltale signs for a significantly different texture the remaining two videos will focus more on practical application and figuring out what's the best bottle to buy at the store so definitely subscribe to make sure you get the notification when the next two videos drop but let's quickly recap what we learned here in act one remember act one has been entirely focused on traditional 12-year age 100 grape must balsamic vinegar from the Modena or Amelia romagna regions in Italy we've answered how is traditional balsamic made why is it so expensive how do I know if I'm buying authentic balsamic and lastly why does it taste good on so many different things so that will wrap it up for me in this one I will catch you all in the next one PCO foreign

Channel: Ethan Chlebowski

Views: 600,736

Keywords: Ethan Chlebowski, traditional balsamic vinegar, balsamic vinegar, balsamic vinegar of modena, italian balsamic vinegar, best balsamic vinegar, balsamic vinegar recipes, balsamic vinegar salad dressing, balsamic vinegar chicken, balsamic vinegar reduction, balsamic vinegar benefits, traditional balsamic vinegar of modena, balsamic vinegar of modena recipes, aged balsamic vinegar of modena, taste testing ice cream, taste test, italian food recipes, balsamic vinegar uses

Id: hiLxBSwkZnA

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 13 2023